Inglês

Read the text and answer the question

Argentina defaults – Eighth time unlucky

Cristina Fernández argues that her country’s latest default is different. She is missing the point.

Aug 2nd 2014
ARGENTINA’S first bond, issued in 1824, was supposed to have had a lifespan of 46 years. Less than four years later, the government defaulted. Resolving the ensuing stand-off with creditors took 29 years. Since then seven more defaults have followed, the most recent this week, when Argentina failed to make a payment on bonds issued as partial compensation to victims of the previous default, in 2001.
Most investors think they can see a pattern in all this, but Argentina’s president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, insists the latest default is not like the others. Her government, she points out, had transferred the full $539m it owed to the banks that administer the bonds. It is America’s courts (the bonds were issued under American law) that blocked the payment, at the behest of the tiny minority of owners of bonds from 2001 who did not accept the restructuring Argentina offered them in 2005 and again in 2010. These “hold-outs”, balking at the 65% haircut the restructuring entailed, not only persuaded a judge that they should be paid in full but also got him to freeze payments on the restructured bonds until Argentina coughs up.
Argentina claims that paying the hold-outs was impossible. It is not just that they are “vultures” as Argentine officials often put it, who bought the bonds for cents on the dollar after the previous default and are now holding those who accepted the restructuring (accounting for 93% of the debt) to ransom. The main problem is that a clause in the restructured bonds prohibits Argentina from offering the hold-outs better terms without paying everyone else the same. Since it cannot afford to do that, it says it had no choice but to default.
Yet it is not certain that the clause requiring equal treatment of all bondholders would have applied, given that Argentina would not have been paying the hold-outs voluntarily, but on the courts’ orders. Moreover, some owners of the restructured bonds had agreed to waive their rights; had Argentina made a concerted effort to persuade the remainder to do the same, it might have succeeded. Lawyers and bankers have suggested various ways around the clause in question, which expires at the end of the year. But Argentina’s government was slow to consider these options or negotiate with the hold-outs, hiding instead behind indignant nationalism.
Ms Fernández is right that the consequences of America’s court rulings have been perverse, unleashing a big financial dispute in an attempt to solve a relatively small one. But hers is not the first government to be hit with an awkward verdict. Instead of railing against it, she should have tried to minimise the harm it did. Defaulting has helped no one: none of the bondholders will now be paid, Argentina looks like a pariah again, and its economy will remain starved of loans and investment.
Happily, much of the damage can still be undone. It is not too late to strike a deal with the hold-outs or back an ostensibly private effort to buy out their claims. A quick fix would make it easier for Argentina to borrow again internationally. That, in turn, would speed development of big oil and gas deposits, the income from which could help ease its money troubles.
More important, it would help to change perceptions of Argentina as a financial rogue state. Over the past year or so Ms Fernández seems to have been trying to rehabilitate Argentina’s image and resuscitate its faltering economy. She settled financial disputes with government creditors and with Repsol, a Spanish oil firm whose Argentine assets she had expropriated in 2012. This week’s events have overshadowed all that. For its own sake, and everyone else’s, Argentina should hold its nose and do a deal with the hold-outs.

(http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21610263. Adapted)

Leia os textos 1 e 2 para responder à questão:

Texto 1

Call to halve target for added sugar

People need to more than halve their intake of added sugar to tackle the obesity crisis, according to scientific advice for the government in England.

A report by the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition
(SACN) says sugar added to food or naturally present in fruit juice and honey should account for 5% of energy intake.
Many fail to meet the old 10% target. The sugar industry said “demonizing one ingredient” would not “solve the obesity epidemic”.
The body reviewed 600 scientific studies on the evidence of carbohydrates – including sugar – on health to develop the new recommendations. One 330ml can of soft drink would take a typical adult up to the proposed 5% daily allowance, without factoring in sugar from any other source.
Prof Ian MacDonald, chairman of the SACN working group on carbohydrates, said: “The evidence that we have analyzed shows quite clearly that high free sugars intake in adults is associated with increased energy intake and obesity. There is also an association between sugar-sweetened beverages and type-2 diabetes. In children there is clear demonstration that sugar-sweetened beverages are associated with obesity. By reducing it to 5% you would reduce the risk of all of those things, the challenge will be to get there.”
The target of 5% of energy intake from free sugars amounts to 25g for women (five to six teaspoons) and 35g (seven to eight teaspoons) for men, based on the average diet.
Public Health Minister for England, Jane Ellison, said: “We know eating too much sugar can have a significant impact on health, and this advice confirms that. We want to help people make healthier choices and get the nation into healthy habits for life. This report will inform the important debate taking place about sugar.”

(www.bbc.com. Adaptado.)

Texto 2

Eating more fruits and veggies won’t make you lose weight

We’re often told to eat more fruits and vegetables, but the chances that you’ll lose weight just by eating more of these foods are slim. New research suggests increased fruit and vegetable intake is only effective for weight loss if you make an effort to reduce your calorie intake overall. In other words, you need to exercise or consume fewer calories to shed those pounds. Don’t let that stop you from including more fruits and veggies in your diet, though. Even if they don’t directly help you lose weight, these foods still provide a number of health benefits.

Read the text and answer the question

Argentina defaults – Eighth time unlucky

Cristina Fernández argues that her country’s latest default is different. She is missing the point.

Aug 2nd 2014
ARGENTINA’S first bond, issued in 1824, was supposed to have had a lifespan of 46 years. Less than four years later, the government defaulted. Resolving the ensuing stand-off with creditors took 29 years. Since then seven more defaults have followed, the most recent this week, when Argentina failed to make a payment on bonds issued as partial compensation to victims of the previous default, in 2001.
Most investors think they can see a pattern in all this, but Argentina’s president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, insists the latest default is not like the others. Her government, she points out, had transferred the full $539m it owed to the banks that administer the bonds. It is America’s courts (the bonds were issued under American law) that blocked the payment, at the behest of the tiny minority of owners of bonds from 2001 who did not accept the restructuring Argentina offered them in 2005 and again in 2010. These “hold-outs”, balking at the 65% haircut the restructuring entailed, not only persuaded a judge that they should be paid in full but also got him to freeze payments on the restructured bonds until Argentina coughs up.
Argentina claims that paying the hold-outs was impossible. It is not just that they are “vultures” as Argentine officials often put it, who bought the bonds for cents on the dollar after the previous default and are now holding those who accepted the restructuring (accounting for 93% of the debt) to ransom. The main problem is that a clause in the restructured bonds prohibits Argentina from offering the hold-outs better terms without paying everyone else the same. Since it cannot afford to do that, it says it had no choice but to default.
Yet it is not certain that the clause requiring equal treatment of all bondholders would have applied, given that Argentina would not have been paying the hold-outs voluntarily, but on the courts’ orders. Moreover, some owners of the restructured bonds had agreed to waive their rights; had Argentina made a concerted effort to persuade the remainder to do the same, it might have succeeded. Lawyers and bankers have suggested various ways around the clause in question, which expires at the end of the year. But Argentina’s government was slow to consider these options or negotiate with the hold-outs, hiding instead behind indignant nationalism.
Ms Fernández is right that the consequences of America’s court rulings have been perverse, unleashing a big financial dispute in an attempt to solve a relatively small one. But hers is not the first government to be hit with an awkward verdict. Instead of railing against it, she should have tried to minimise the harm it did. Defaulting has helped no one: none of the bondholders will now be paid, Argentina looks like a pariah again, and its economy will remain starved of loans and investment.
Happily, much of the damage can still be undone. It is not too late to strike a deal with the hold-outs or back an ostensibly private effort to buy out their claims. A quick fix would make it easier for Argentina to borrow again internationally. That, in turn, would speed development of big oil and gas deposits, the income from which could help ease its money troubles.
More important, it would help to change perceptions of Argentina as a financial rogue state. Over the past year or so Ms Fernández seems to have been trying to rehabilitate Argentina’s image and resuscitate its faltering economy. She settled financial disputes with government creditors and with Repsol, a Spanish oil firm whose Argentine assets she had expropriated in 2012. This week’s events have overshadowed all that. For its own sake, and everyone else’s, Argentina should hold its nose and do a deal with the hold-outs.

(http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21610263. Adapted)

Leia os textos 1 e 2 para responder à questão:

Texto 1

Call to halve target for added sugar

People need to more than halve their intake of added sugar to tackle the obesity crisis, according to scientific advice for the government in England.

A report by the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition
(SACN) says sugar added to food or naturally present in fruit juice and honey should account for 5% of energy intake.
Many fail to meet the old 10% target. The sugar industry said “demonizing one ingredient” would not “solve the obesity epidemic”.
The body reviewed 600 scientific studies on the evidence of carbohydrates – including sugar – on health to develop the new recommendations. One 330ml can of soft drink would take a typical adult up to the proposed 5% daily allowance, without factoring in sugar from any other source.
Prof Ian MacDonald, chairman of the SACN working group on carbohydrates, said: “The evidence that we have analyzed shows quite clearly that high free sugars intake in adults is associated with increased energy intake and obesity. There is also an association between sugar-sweetened beverages and type-2 diabetes. In children there is clear demonstration that sugar-sweetened beverages are associated with obesity. By reducing it to 5% you would reduce the risk of all of those things, the challenge will be to get there.”
The target of 5% of energy intake from free sugars amounts to 25g for women (five to six teaspoons) and 35g (seven to eight teaspoons) for men, based on the average diet.
Public Health Minister for England, Jane Ellison, said: “We know eating too much sugar can have a significant impact on health, and this advice confirms that. We want to help people make healthier choices and get the nation into healthy habits for life. This report will inform the important debate taking place about sugar.”

(www.bbc.com. Adaptado.)

Texto 2

Eating more fruits and veggies won’t make you lose weight

We’re often told to eat more fruits and vegetables, but the chances that you’ll lose weight just by eating more of these foods are slim. New research suggests increased fruit and vegetable intake is only effective for weight loss if you make an effort to reduce your calorie intake overall. In other words, you need to exercise or consume fewer calories to shed those pounds. Don’t let that stop you from including more fruits and veggies in your diet, though. Even if they don’t directly help you lose weight, these foods still provide a number of health benefits.

Read the text and answer the question

Argentina defaults – Eighth time unlucky

Cristina Fernández argues that her country’s latest default is different. She is missing the point.

Aug 2nd 2014
ARGENTINA’S first bond, issued in 1824, was supposed to have had a lifespan of 46 years. Less than four years later, the government defaulted. Resolving the ensuing stand-off with creditors took 29 years. Since then seven more defaults have followed, the most recent this week, when Argentina failed to make a payment on bonds issued as partial compensation to victims of the previous default, in 2001.
Most investors think they can see a pattern in all this, but Argentina’s president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, insists the latest default is not like the others. Her government, she points out, had transferred the full $539m it owed to the banks that administer the bonds. It is America’s courts (the bonds were issued under American law) that blocked the payment, at the behest of the tiny minority of owners of bonds from 2001 who did not accept the restructuring Argentina offered them in 2005 and again in 2010. These “hold-outs”, balking at the 65% haircut the restructuring entailed, not only persuaded a judge that they should be paid in full but also got him to freeze payments on the restructured bonds until Argentina coughs up.
Argentina claims that paying the hold-outs was impossible. It is not just that they are “vultures” as Argentine officials often put it, who bought the bonds for cents on the dollar after the previous default and are now holding those who accepted the restructuring (accounting for 93% of the debt) to ransom. The main problem is that a clause in the restructured bonds prohibits Argentina from offering the hold-outs better terms without paying everyone else the same. Since it cannot afford to do that, it says it had no choice but to default.
Yet it is not certain that the clause requiring equal treatment of all bondholders would have applied, given that Argentina would not have been paying the hold-outs voluntarily, but on the courts’ orders. Moreover, some owners of the restructured bonds had agreed to waive their rights; had Argentina made a concerted effort to persuade the remainder to do the same, it might have succeeded. Lawyers and bankers have suggested various ways around the clause in question, which expires at the end of the year. But Argentina’s government was slow to consider these options or negotiate with the hold-outs, hiding instead behind indignant nationalism.
Ms Fernández is right that the consequences of America’s court rulings have been perverse, unleashing a big financial dispute in an attempt to solve a relatively small one. But hers is not the first government to be hit with an awkward verdict. Instead of railing against it, she should have tried to minimise the harm it did. Defaulting has helped no one: none of the bondholders will now be paid, Argentina looks like a pariah again, and its economy will remain starved of loans and investment.
Happily, much of the damage can still be undone. It is not too late to strike a deal with the hold-outs or back an ostensibly private effort to buy out their claims. A quick fix would make it easier for Argentina to borrow again internationally. That, in turn, would speed development of big oil and gas deposits, the income from which could help ease its money troubles.
More important, it would help to change perceptions of Argentina as a financial rogue state. Over the past year or so Ms Fernández seems to have been trying to rehabilitate Argentina’s image and resuscitate its faltering economy. She settled financial disputes with government creditors and with Repsol, a Spanish oil firm whose Argentine assets she had expropriated in 2012. This week’s events have overshadowed all that. For its own sake, and everyone else’s, Argentina should hold its nose and do a deal with the hold-outs.

(http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21610263. Adapted)

Read the text and answer the question

Argentina defaults – Eighth time unlucky

Cristina Fernández argues that her country’s latest default is different. She is missing the point.

Aug 2nd 2014
ARGENTINA’S first bond, issued in 1824, was supposed to have had a lifespan of 46 years. Less than four years later, the government defaulted. Resolving the ensuing stand-off with creditors took 29 years. Since then seven more defaults have followed, the most recent this week, when Argentina failed to make a payment on bonds issued as partial compensation to victims of the previous default, in 2001.
Most investors think they can see a pattern in all this, but Argentina’s president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, insists the latest default is not like the others. Her government, she points out, had transferred the full $539m it owed to the banks that administer the bonds. It is America’s courts (the bonds were issued under American law) that blocked the payment, at the behest of the tiny minority of owners of bonds from 2001 who did not accept the restructuring Argentina offered them in 2005 and again in 2010. These “hold-outs”, balking at the 65% haircut the restructuring entailed, not only persuaded a judge that they should be paid in full but also got him to freeze payments on the restructured bonds until Argentina coughs up.
Argentina claims that paying the hold-outs was impossible. It is not just that they are “vultures” as Argentine officials often put it, who bought the bonds for cents on the dollar after the previous default and are now holding those who accepted the restructuring (accounting for 93% of the debt) to ransom. The main problem is that a clause in the restructured bonds prohibits Argentina from offering the hold-outs better terms without paying everyone else the same. Since it cannot afford to do that, it says it had no choice but to default.
Yet it is not certain that the clause requiring equal treatment of all bondholders would have applied, given that Argentina would not have been paying the hold-outs voluntarily, but on the courts’ orders. Moreover, some owners of the restructured bonds had agreed to waive their rights; had Argentina made a concerted effort to persuade the remainder to do the same, it might have succeeded. Lawyers and bankers have suggested various ways around the clause in question, which expires at the end of the year. But Argentina’s government was slow to consider these options or negotiate with the hold-outs, hiding instead behind indignant nationalism.
Ms Fernández is right that the consequences of America’s court rulings have been perverse, unleashing a big financial dispute in an attempt to solve a relatively small one. But hers is not the first government to be hit with an awkward verdict. Instead of railing against it, she should have tried to minimise the harm it did. Defaulting has helped no one: none of the bondholders will now be paid, Argentina looks like a pariah again, and its economy will remain starved of loans and investment.
Happily, much of the damage can still be undone. It is not too late to strike a deal with the hold-outs or back an ostensibly private effort to buy out their claims. A quick fix would make it easier for Argentina to borrow again internationally. That, in turn, would speed development of big oil and gas deposits, the income from which could help ease its money troubles.
More important, it would help to change perceptions of Argentina as a financial rogue state. Over the past year or so Ms Fernández seems to have been trying to rehabilitate Argentina’s image and resuscitate its faltering economy. She settled financial disputes with government creditors and with Repsol, a Spanish oil firm whose Argentine assets she had expropriated in 2012. This week’s events have overshadowed all that. For its own sake, and everyone else’s, Argentina should hold its nose and do a deal with the hold-outs.

(http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21610263. Adapted)

Read the text and answer the question

Argentina defaults – Eighth time unlucky

Cristina Fernández argues that her country’s latest default is different. She is missing the point.

Aug 2nd 2014
ARGENTINA’S first bond, issued in 1824, was supposed to have had a lifespan of 46 years. Less than four years later, the government defaulted. Resolving the ensuing stand-off with creditors took 29 years. Since then seven more defaults have followed, the most recent this week, when Argentina failed to make a payment on bonds issued as partial compensation to victims of the previous default, in 2001.
Most investors think they can see a pattern in all this, but Argentina’s president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, insists the latest default is not like the others. Her government, she points out, had transferred the full $539m it owed to the banks that administer the bonds. It is America’s courts (the bonds were issued under American law) that blocked the payment, at the behest of the tiny minority of owners of bonds from 2001 who did not accept the restructuring Argentina offered them in 2005 and again in 2010. These “hold-outs”, balking at the 65% haircut the restructuring entailed, not only persuaded a judge that they should be paid in full but also got him to freeze payments on the restructured bonds until Argentina coughs up.
Argentina claims that paying the hold-outs was impossible. It is not just that they are “vultures” as Argentine officials often put it, who bought the bonds for cents on the dollar after the previous default and are now holding those who accepted the restructuring (accounting for 93% of the debt) to ransom. The main problem is that a clause in the restructured bonds prohibits Argentina from offering the hold-outs better terms without paying everyone else the same. Since it cannot afford to do that, it says it had no choice but to default.
Yet it is not certain that the clause requiring equal treatment of all bondholders would have applied, given that Argentina would not have been paying the hold-outs voluntarily, but on the courts’ orders. Moreover, some owners of the restructured bonds had agreed to waive their rights; had Argentina made a concerted effort to persuade the remainder to do the same, it might have succeeded. Lawyers and bankers have suggested various ways around the clause in question, which expires at the end of the year. But Argentina’s government was slow to consider these options or negotiate with the hold-outs, hiding instead behind indignant nationalism.
Ms Fernández is right that the consequences of America’s court rulings have been perverse, unleashing a big financial dispute in an attempt to solve a relatively small one. But hers is not the first government to be hit with an awkward verdict. Instead of railing against it, she should have tried to minimise the harm it did. Defaulting has helped no one: none of the bondholders will now be paid, Argentina looks like a pariah again, and its economy will remain starved of loans and investment.
Happily, much of the damage can still be undone. It is not too late to strike a deal with the hold-outs or back an ostensibly private effort to buy out their claims. A quick fix would make it easier for Argentina to borrow again internationally. That, in turn, would speed development of big oil and gas deposits, the income from which could help ease its money troubles.
More important, it would help to change perceptions of Argentina as a financial rogue state. Over the past year or so Ms Fernández seems to have been trying to rehabilitate Argentina’s image and resuscitate its faltering economy. She settled financial disputes with government creditors and with Repsol, a Spanish oil firm whose Argentine assets she had expropriated in 2012. This week’s events have overshadowed all that. For its own sake, and everyone else’s, Argentina should hold its nose and do a deal with the hold-outs.

(http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21610263. Adapted)

Read the text and answer the question

Argentina defaults – Eighth time unlucky

Cristina Fernández argues that her country’s latest default is different. She is missing the point.

Aug 2nd 2014
ARGENTINA’S first bond, issued in 1824, was supposed to have had a lifespan of 46 years. Less than four years later, the government defaulted. Resolving the ensuing stand-off with creditors took 29 years. Since then seven more defaults have followed, the most recent this week, when Argentina failed to make a payment on bonds issued as partial compensation to victims of the previous default, in 2001.
Most investors think they can see a pattern in all this, but Argentina’s president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, insists the latest default is not like the others. Her government, she points out, had transferred the full $539m it owed to the banks that administer the bonds. It is America’s courts (the bonds were issued under American law) that blocked the payment, at the behest of the tiny minority of owners of bonds from 2001 who did not accept the restructuring Argentina offered them in 2005 and again in 2010. These “hold-outs”, balking at the 65% haircut the restructuring entailed, not only persuaded a judge that they should be paid in full but also got him to freeze payments on the restructured bonds until Argentina coughs up.
Argentina claims that paying the hold-outs was impossible. It is not just that they are “vultures” as Argentine officials often put it, who bought the bonds for cents on the dollar after the previous default and are now holding those who accepted the restructuring (accounting for 93% of the debt) to ransom. The main problem is that a clause in the restructured bonds prohibits Argentina from offering the hold-outs better terms without paying everyone else the same. Since it cannot afford to do that, it says it had no choice but to default.
Yet it is not certain that the clause requiring equal treatment of all bondholders would have applied, given that Argentina would not have been paying the hold-outs voluntarily, but on the courts’ orders. Moreover, some owners of the restructured bonds had agreed to waive their rights; had Argentina made a concerted effort to persuade the remainder to do the same, it might have succeeded. Lawyers and bankers have suggested various ways around the clause in question, which expires at the end of the year. But Argentina’s government was slow to consider these options or negotiate with the hold-outs, hiding instead behind indignant nationalism.
Ms Fernández is right that the consequences of America’s court rulings have been perverse, unleashing a big financial dispute in an attempt to solve a relatively small one. But hers is not the first government to be hit with an awkward verdict. Instead of railing against it, she should have tried to minimise the harm it did. Defaulting has helped no one: none of the bondholders will now be paid, Argentina looks like a pariah again, and its economy will remain starved of loans and investment.
Happily, much of the damage can still be undone. It is not too late to strike a deal with the hold-outs or back an ostensibly private effort to buy out their claims. A quick fix would make it easier for Argentina to borrow again internationally. That, in turn, would speed development of big oil and gas deposits, the income from which could help ease its money troubles.
More important, it would help to change perceptions of Argentina as a financial rogue state. Over the past year or so Ms Fernández seems to have been trying to rehabilitate Argentina’s image and resuscitate its faltering economy. She settled financial disputes with government creditors and with Repsol, a Spanish oil firm whose Argentine assets she had expropriated in 2012. This week’s events have overshadowed all that. For its own sake, and everyone else’s, Argentina should hold its nose and do a deal with the hold-outs.

(http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21610263. Adapted)

Read the text and answer the question

Argentina defaults – Eighth time unlucky

Cristina Fernández argues that her country’s latest default is different. She is missing the point.

Aug 2nd 2014
ARGENTINA’S first bond, issued in 1824, was supposed to have had a lifespan of 46 years. Less than four years later, the government defaulted. Resolving the ensuing stand-off with creditors took 29 years. Since then seven more defaults have followed, the most recent this week, when Argentina failed to make a payment on bonds issued as partial compensation to victims of the previous default, in 2001.
Most investors think they can see a pattern in all this, but Argentina’s president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, insists the latest default is not like the others. Her government, she points out, had transferred the full $539m it owed to the banks that administer the bonds. It is America’s courts (the bonds were issued under American law) that blocked the payment, at the behest of the tiny minority of owners of bonds from 2001 who did not accept the restructuring Argentina offered them in 2005 and again in 2010. These “hold-outs”, balking at the 65% haircut the restructuring entailed, not only persuaded a judge that they should be paid in full but also got him to freeze payments on the restructured bonds until Argentina coughs up.
Argentina claims that paying the hold-outs was impossible. It is not just that they are “vultures” as Argentine officials often put it, who bought the bonds for cents on the dollar after the previous default and are now holding those who accepted the restructuring (accounting for 93% of the debt) to ransom. The main problem is that a clause in the restructured bonds prohibits Argentina from offering the hold-outs better terms without paying everyone else the same. Since it cannot afford to do that, it says it had no choice but to default.
Yet it is not certain that the clause requiring equal treatment of all bondholders would have applied, given that Argentina would not have been paying the hold-outs voluntarily, but on the courts’ orders. Moreover, some owners of the restructured bonds had agreed to waive their rights; had Argentina made a concerted effort to persuade the remainder to do the same, it might have succeeded. Lawyers and bankers have suggested various ways around the clause in question, which expires at the end of the year. But Argentina’s government was slow to consider these options or negotiate with the hold-outs, hiding instead behind indignant nationalism.
Ms Fernández is right that the consequences of America’s court rulings have been perverse, unleashing a big financial dispute in an attempt to solve a relatively small one. But hers is not the first government to be hit with an awkward verdict. Instead of railing against it, she should have tried to minimise the harm it did. Defaulting has helped no one: none of the bondholders will now be paid, Argentina looks like a pariah again, and its economy will remain starved of loans and investment.
Happily, much of the damage can still be undone. It is not too late to strike a deal with the hold-outs or back an ostensibly private effort to buy out their claims. A quick fix would make it easier for Argentina to borrow again internationally. That, in turn, would speed development of big oil and gas deposits, the income from which could help ease its money troubles.
More important, it would help to change perceptions of Argentina as a financial rogue state. Over the past year or so Ms Fernández seems to have been trying to rehabilitate Argentina’s image and resuscitate its faltering economy. She settled financial disputes with government creditors and with Repsol, a Spanish oil firm whose Argentine assets she had expropriated in 2012. This week’s events have overshadowed all that. For its own sake, and everyone else’s, Argentina should hold its nose and do a deal with the hold-outs.

(http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21610263. Adapted)

Read the text and answer the question

Argentina defaults – Eighth time unlucky

Cristina Fernández argues that her country’s latest default is different. She is missing the point.

Aug 2nd 2014
ARGENTINA’S first bond, issued in 1824, was supposed to have had a lifespan of 46 years. Less than four years later, the government defaulted. Resolving the ensuing stand-off with creditors took 29 years. Since then seven more defaults have followed, the most recent this week, when Argentina failed to make a payment on bonds issued as partial compensation to victims of the previous default, in 2001.
Most investors think they can see a pattern in all this, but Argentina’s president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, insists the latest default is not like the others. Her government, she points out, had transferred the full $539m it owed to the banks that administer the bonds. It is America’s courts (the bonds were issued under American law) that blocked the payment, at the behest of the tiny minority of owners of bonds from 2001 who did not accept the restructuring Argentina offered them in 2005 and again in 2010. These “hold-outs”, balking at the 65% haircut the restructuring entailed, not only persuaded a judge that they should be paid in full but also got him to freeze payments on the restructured bonds until Argentina coughs up.
Argentina claims that paying the hold-outs was impossible. It is not just that they are “vultures” as Argentine officials often put it, who bought the bonds for cents on the dollar after the previous default and are now holding those who accepted the restructuring (accounting for 93% of the debt) to ransom. The main problem is that a clause in the restructured bonds prohibits Argentina from offering the hold-outs better terms without paying everyone else the same. Since it cannot afford to do that, it says it had no choice but to default.
Yet it is not certain that the clause requiring equal treatment of all bondholders would have applied, given that Argentina would not have been paying the hold-outs voluntarily, but on the courts’ orders. Moreover, some owners of the restructured bonds had agreed to waive their rights; had Argentina made a concerted effort to persuade the remainder to do the same, it might have succeeded. Lawyers and bankers have suggested various ways around the clause in question, which expires at the end of the year. But Argentina’s government was slow to consider these options or negotiate with the hold-outs, hiding instead behind indignant nationalism.
Ms Fernández is right that the consequences of America’s court rulings have been perverse, unleashing a big financial dispute in an attempt to solve a relatively small one. But hers is not the first government to be hit with an awkward verdict. Instead of railing against it, she should have tried to minimise the harm it did. Defaulting has helped no one: none of the bondholders will now be paid, Argentina looks like a pariah again, and its economy will remain starved of loans and investment.
Happily, much of the damage can still be undone. It is not too late to strike a deal with the hold-outs or back an ostensibly private effort to buy out their claims. A quick fix would make it easier for Argentina to borrow again internationally. That, in turn, would speed development of big oil and gas deposits, the income from which could help ease its money troubles.
More important, it would help to change perceptions of Argentina as a financial rogue state. Over the past year or so Ms Fernández seems to have been trying to rehabilitate Argentina’s image and resuscitate its faltering economy. She settled financial disputes with government creditors and with Repsol, a Spanish oil firm whose Argentine assets she had expropriated in 2012. This week’s events have overshadowed all that. For its own sake, and everyone else’s, Argentina should hold its nose and do a deal with the hold-outs.

(http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21610263. Adapted)

Read the text and answer the question

Argentina defaults – Eighth time unlucky

Cristina Fernández argues that her country’s latest default is different. She is missing the point.

Aug 2nd 2014
ARGENTINA’S first bond, issued in 1824, was supposed to have had a lifespan of 46 years. Less than four years later, the government defaulted. Resolving the ensuing stand-off with creditors took 29 years. Since then seven more defaults have followed, the most recent this week, when Argentina failed to make a payment on bonds issued as partial compensation to victims of the previous default, in 2001.
Most investors think they can see a pattern in all this, but Argentina’s president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, insists the latest default is not like the others. Her government, she points out, had transferred the full $539m it owed to the banks that administer the bonds. It is America’s courts (the bonds were issued under American law) that blocked the payment, at the behest of the tiny minority of owners of bonds from 2001 who did not accept the restructuring Argentina offered them in 2005 and again in 2010. These “hold-outs”, balking at the 65% haircut the restructuring entailed, not only persuaded a judge that they should be paid in full but also got him to freeze payments on the restructured bonds until Argentina coughs up.
Argentina claims that paying the hold-outs was impossible. It is not just that they are “vultures” as Argentine officials often put it, who bought the bonds for cents on the dollar after the previous default and are now holding those who accepted the restructuring (accounting for 93% of the debt) to ransom. The main problem is that a clause in the restructured bonds prohibits Argentina from offering the hold-outs better terms without paying everyone else the same. Since it cannot afford to do that, it says it had no choice but to default.
Yet it is not certain that the clause requiring equal treatment of all bondholders would have applied, given that Argentina would not have been paying the hold-outs voluntarily, but on the courts’ orders. Moreover, some owners of the restructured bonds had agreed to waive their rights; had Argentina made a concerted effort to persuade the remainder to do the same, it might have succeeded. Lawyers and bankers have suggested various ways around the clause in question, which expires at the end of the year. But Argentina’s government was slow to consider these options or negotiate with the hold-outs, hiding instead behind indignant nationalism.
Ms Fernández is right that the consequences of America’s court rulings have been perverse, unleashing a big financial dispute in an attempt to solve a relatively small one. But hers is not the first government to be hit with an awkward verdict. Instead of railing against it, she should have tried to minimise the harm it did. Defaulting has helped no one: none of the bondholders will now be paid, Argentina looks like a pariah again, and its economy will remain starved of loans and investment.
Happily, much of the damage can still be undone. It is not too late to strike a deal with the hold-outs or back an ostensibly private effort to buy out their claims. A quick fix would make it easier for Argentina to borrow again internationally. That, in turn, would speed development of big oil and gas deposits, the income from which could help ease its money troubles.
More important, it would help to change perceptions of Argentina as a financial rogue state. Over the past year or so Ms Fernández seems to have been trying to rehabilitate Argentina’s image and resuscitate its faltering economy. She settled financial disputes with government creditors and with Repsol, a Spanish oil firm whose Argentine assets she had expropriated in 2012. This week’s events have overshadowed all that. For its own sake, and everyone else’s, Argentina should hold its nose and do a deal with the hold-outs.

(http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21610263. Adapted)

Read the text and answer the question

Argentina defaults – Eighth time unlucky

Cristina Fernández argues that her country’s latest default is different. She is missing the point.

Aug 2nd 2014
ARGENTINA’S first bond, issued in 1824, was supposed to have had a lifespan of 46 years. Less than four years later, the government defaulted. Resolving the ensuing stand-off with creditors took 29 years. Since then seven more defaults have followed, the most recent this week, when Argentina failed to make a payment on bonds issued as partial compensation to victims of the previous default, in 2001.
Most investors think they can see a pattern in all this, but Argentina’s president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, insists the latest default is not like the others. Her government, she points out, had transferred the full $539m it owed to the banks that administer the bonds. It is America’s courts (the bonds were issued under American law) that blocked the payment, at the behest of the tiny minority of owners of bonds from 2001 who did not accept the restructuring Argentina offered them in 2005 and again in 2010. These “hold-outs”, balking at the 65% haircut the restructuring entailed, not only persuaded a judge that they should be paid in full but also got him to freeze payments on the restructured bonds until Argentina coughs up.
Argentina claims that paying the hold-outs was impossible. It is not just that they are “vultures” as Argentine officials often put it, who bought the bonds for cents on the dollar after the previous default and are now holding those who accepted the restructuring (accounting for 93% of the debt) to ransom. The main problem is that a clause in the restructured bonds prohibits Argentina from offering the hold-outs better terms without paying everyone else the same. Since it cannot afford to do that, it says it had no choice but to default.
Yet it is not certain that the clause requiring equal treatment of all bondholders would have applied, given that Argentina would not have been paying the hold-outs voluntarily, but on the courts’ orders. Moreover, some owners of the restructured bonds had agreed to waive their rights; had Argentina made a concerted effort to persuade the remainder to do the same, it might have succeeded. Lawyers and bankers have suggested various ways around the clause in question, which expires at the end of the year. But Argentina’s government was slow to consider these options or negotiate with the hold-outs, hiding instead behind indignant nationalism.
Ms Fernández is right that the consequences of America’s court rulings have been perverse, unleashing a big financial dispute in an attempt to solve a relatively small one. But hers is not the first government to be hit with an awkward verdict. Instead of railing against it, she should have tried to minimise the harm it did. Defaulting has helped no one: none of the bondholders will now be paid, Argentina looks like a pariah again, and its economy will remain starved of loans and investment.
Happily, much of the damage can still be undone. It is not too late to strike a deal with the hold-outs or back an ostensibly private effort to buy out their claims. A quick fix would make it easier for Argentina to borrow again internationally. That, in turn, would speed development of big oil and gas deposits, the income from which could help ease its money troubles.
More important, it would help to change perceptions of Argentina as a financial rogue state. Over the past year or so Ms Fernández seems to have been trying to rehabilitate Argentina’s image and resuscitate its faltering economy. She settled financial disputes with government creditors and with Repsol, a Spanish oil firm whose Argentine assets she had expropriated in 2012. This week’s events have overshadowed all that. For its own sake, and everyone else’s, Argentina should hold its nose and do a deal with the hold-outs.

(http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21610263. Adapted)

Read the text and answer the question

Argentina defaults – Eighth time unlucky

Cristina Fernández argues that her country’s latest default is different. She is missing the point.

Aug 2nd 2014
ARGENTINA’S first bond, issued in 1824, was supposed to have had a lifespan of 46 years. Less than four years later, the government defaulted. Resolving the ensuing stand-off with creditors took 29 years. Since then seven more defaults have followed, the most recent this week, when Argentina failed to make a payment on bonds issued as partial compensation to victims of the previous default, in 2001.
Most investors think they can see a pattern in all this, but Argentina’s president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, insists the latest default is not like the others. Her government, she points out, had transferred the full $539m it owed to the banks that administer the bonds. It is America’s courts (the bonds were issued under American law) that blocked the payment, at the behest of the tiny minority of owners of bonds from 2001 who did not accept the restructuring Argentina offered them in 2005 and again in 2010. These “hold-outs”, balking at the 65% haircut the restructuring entailed, not only persuaded a judge that they should be paid in full but also got him to freeze payments on the restructured bonds until Argentina coughs up.
Argentina claims that paying the hold-outs was impossible. It is not just that they are “vultures” as Argentine officials often put it, who bought the bonds for cents on the dollar after the previous default and are now holding those who accepted the restructuring (accounting for 93% of the debt) to ransom. The main problem is that a clause in the restructured bonds prohibits Argentina from offering the hold-outs better terms without paying everyone else the same. Since it cannot afford to do that, it says it had no choice but to default.
Yet it is not certain that the clause requiring equal treatment of all bondholders would have applied, given that Argentina would not have been paying the hold-outs voluntarily, but on the courts’ orders. Moreover, some owners of the restructured bonds had agreed to waive their rights; had Argentina made a concerted effort to persuade the remainder to do the same, it might have succeeded. Lawyers and bankers have suggested various ways around the clause in question, which expires at the end of the year. But Argentina’s government was slow to consider these options or negotiate with the hold-outs, hiding instead behind indignant nationalism.
Ms Fernández is right that the consequences of America’s court rulings have been perverse, unleashing a big financial dispute in an attempt to solve a relatively small one. But hers is not the first government to be hit with an awkward verdict. Instead of railing against it, she should have tried to minimise the harm it did. Defaulting has helped no one: none of the bondholders will now be paid, Argentina looks like a pariah again, and its economy will remain starved of loans and investment.
Happily, much of the damage can still be undone. It is not too late to strike a deal with the hold-outs or back an ostensibly private effort to buy out their claims. A quick fix would make it easier for Argentina to borrow again internationally. That, in turn, would speed development of big oil and gas deposits, the income from which could help ease its money troubles.
More important, it would help to change perceptions of Argentina as a financial rogue state. Over the past year or so Ms Fernández seems to have been trying to rehabilitate Argentina’s image and resuscitate its faltering economy. She settled financial disputes with government creditors and with Repsol, a Spanish oil firm whose Argentine assets she had expropriated in 2012. This week’s events have overshadowed all that. For its own sake, and everyone else’s, Argentina should hold its nose and do a deal with the hold-outs.

(http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21610263. Adapted)

Read the text and answer the question

Argentina defaults – Eighth time unlucky

Cristina Fernández argues that her country’s latest default is different. She is missing the point.

Aug 2nd 2014
ARGENTINA’S first bond, issued in 1824, was supposed to have had a lifespan of 46 years. Less than four years later, the government defaulted. Resolving the ensuing stand-off with creditors took 29 years. Since then seven more defaults have followed, the most recent this week, when Argentina failed to make a payment on bonds issued as partial compensation to victims of the previous default, in 2001.
Most investors think they can see a pattern in all this, but Argentina’s president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, insists the latest default is not like the others. Her government, she points out, had transferred the full $539m it owed to the banks that administer the bonds. It is America’s courts (the bonds were issued under American law) that blocked the payment, at the behest of the tiny minority of owners of bonds from 2001 who did not accept the restructuring Argentina offered them in 2005 and again in 2010. These “hold-outs”, balking at the 65% haircut the restructuring entailed, not only persuaded a judge that they should be paid in full but also got him to freeze payments on the restructured bonds until Argentina coughs up.
Argentina claims that paying the hold-outs was impossible. It is not just that they are “vultures” as Argentine officials often put it, who bought the bonds for cents on the dollar after the previous default and are now holding those who accepted the restructuring (accounting for 93% of the debt) to ransom. The main problem is that a clause in the restructured bonds prohibits Argentina from offering the hold-outs better terms without paying everyone else the same. Since it cannot afford to do that, it says it had no choice but to default.
Yet it is not certain that the clause requiring equal treatment of all bondholders would have applied, given that Argentina would not have been paying the hold-outs voluntarily, but on the courts’ orders. Moreover, some owners of the restructured bonds had agreed to waive their rights; had Argentina made a concerted effort to persuade the remainder to do the same, it might have succeeded. Lawyers and bankers have suggested various ways around the clause in question, which expires at the end of the year. But Argentina’s government was slow to consider these options or negotiate with the hold-outs, hiding instead behind indignant nationalism.
Ms Fernández is right that the consequences of America’s court rulings have been perverse, unleashing a big financial dispute in an attempt to solve a relatively small one. But hers is not the first government to be hit with an awkward verdict. Instead of railing against it, she should have tried to minimise the harm it did. Defaulting has helped no one: none of the bondholders will now be paid, Argentina looks like a pariah again, and its economy will remain starved of loans and investment.
Happily, much of the damage can still be undone. It is not too late to strike a deal with the hold-outs or back an ostensibly private effort to buy out their claims. A quick fix would make it easier for Argentina to borrow again internationally. That, in turn, would speed development of big oil and gas deposits, the income from which could help ease its money troubles.
More important, it would help to change perceptions of Argentina as a financial rogue state. Over the past year or so Ms Fernández seems to have been trying to rehabilitate Argentina’s image and resuscitate its faltering economy. She settled financial disputes with government creditors and with Repsol, a Spanish oil firm whose Argentine assets she had expropriated in 2012. This week’s events have overshadowed all that. For its own sake, and everyone else’s, Argentina should hold its nose and do a deal with the hold-outs.

(http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21610263. Adapted)

Examine o quadrinho para responder a questão.

Leia o texto para responder a questão.

Every new piece of information about Britain’s weight problem makes for ever more depressing reading. Duncan Selbie, the Chief Executive of Public Health England, today tells us that by 2034 some six million Britons will suffer from diabetes. Of course, many people develop diabetes through no fault of their own. But Mr Selbie’s research concludes that if the levels of obesity returned to their 1994 levels, 1.7 million fewer people would suffer from the condition.
Given that fighting diabetes already drains the National Health Service (NHS) by more than £1.5 million, or 10 per cent of its budget for England, the impact upon the Treasury in 20 years’ time from unhealthy lifestyles could be catastrophic. Bad health not only impacts on the individual but also on the rest of the community. Diagnosis of the challenge is straightforward. The tougher question is what to do about reducing waistlines in a country where we traditionally do not like telling individuals what to do.
It is interesting to note that Mr Selbie does not ascribe to the Big Brother approach of ceaseless legislation and nannying. Rather, he is keen to promote choices – making the case passionately that people should be encouraged to embrace good health. One of his suggestions is that parents feed their children from smaller plates. That way the child can clear his or her plate, as ordered, without actually consuming too much. Like all good ideas, this is rooted in common sense.

(www.telegraph.co.uk. Adaptado.)

Leia o texto para responder a questão.

Every new piece of information about Britain’s weight problem makes for ever more depressing reading. Duncan Selbie, the Chief Executive of Public Health England, today tells us that by 2034 some six million Britons will suffer from diabetes. Of course, many people develop diabetes through no fault of their own. But Mr Selbie’s research concludes that if the levels of obesity returned to their 1994 levels, 1.7 million fewer people would suffer from the condition.
Given that fighting diabetes already drains the National Health Service (NHS) by more than £1.5 million, or 10 per cent of its budget for England, the impact upon the Treasury in 20 years’ time from unhealthy lifestyles could be catastrophic. Bad health not only impacts on the individual but also on the rest of the community. Diagnosis of the challenge is straightforward. The tougher question is what to do about reducing waistlines in a country where we traditionally do not like telling individuals what to do.
It is interesting to note that Mr Selbie does not ascribe to the Big Brother approach of ceaseless legislation and nannying. Rather, he is keen to promote choices – making the case passionately that people should be encouraged to embrace good health. One of his suggestions is that parents feed their children from smaller plates. That way the child can clear his or her plate, as ordered, without actually consuming too much. Like all good ideas, this is rooted in common sense.

(www.telegraph.co.uk. Adaptado.)

Leia o texto para responder a questão.

Every new piece of information about Britain’s weight problem makes for ever more depressing reading. Duncan Selbie, the Chief Executive of Public Health England, today tells us that by 2034 some six million Britons will suffer from diabetes. Of course, many people develop diabetes through no fault of their own. But Mr Selbie’s research concludes that if the levels of obesity returned to their 1994 levels, 1.7 million fewer people would suffer from the condition.
Given that fighting diabetes already drains the National Health Service (NHS) by more than £1.5 million, or 10 per cent of its budget for England, the impact upon the Treasury in 20 years’ time from unhealthy lifestyles could be catastrophic. Bad health not only impacts on the individual but also on the rest of the community. Diagnosis of the challenge is straightforward. The tougher question is what to do about reducing waistlines in a country where we traditionally do not like telling individuals what to do.
It is interesting to note that Mr Selbie does not ascribe to the Big Brother approach of ceaseless legislation and nannying. Rather, he is keen to promote choices – making the case passionately that people should be encouraged to embrace good health. One of his suggestions is that parents feed their children from smaller plates. That way the child can clear his or her plate, as ordered, without actually consuming too much. Like all good ideas, this is rooted in common sense.

(www.telegraph.co.uk. Adaptado.)

AIRLINE COMPENSATION

By Susan Stellin

1 The day I was supposed to fly from London to Newark this spring, British Airways sent an e-mail saying the flight had been canceled. When I called to rebook, the British Airways agent offered a flight two hours earlier, which meant my boyfriend and I had to drop everything and race to Heathrow. The payoff came a month later, when the airline sent a check for $787 (300 euros each), compensation for our inconvenience.
2 Travelers on flights that are canceled or delayed must often accept whatever rebooking an airline offers, even if it means getting stranded at an airport for days. In the United States airlines aren’t required to compensate passengers on delayed or canceled flights, but it’s a different story in Europe. The payment that my boyfriend and I received was required by the European Union’s passenger rights law, EC 261, which obligates airlines to pay for a hotel room and meals if travelers are stranded because of a cancellation or delay.
3 If the problem is the airline’s fault — for instance, our cancellation was due to a malfunctioning plane — the carrier is supposed to compensate passengers up to 600 euros, based on the length of the flight and how long you’re delayed. I was surprised that we qualified since we actually got an earlier flight, but the law covers situations when passengers have little advance notice and have to change their plans.
4 EC 261 applies to any airline departing from the European Union — including American carriers — and European airlines flying to or from Europe. It was adopted in 2005; since then, similar rules have been extended to passengers traveling within Europe by rail, ship or bus.
5 In theory, the law gives travelers greater protection in Europe than in the United States. In practice, airlines on both sides of the Atlantic have resisted paying some of these benefits, and many passengers do not even know these rights exist. The e-mails British Airways sent me didn’t mention compensation, and neither did the agent I spoke with. I knew about the law so I found the information on the airline’s Internet site. But the claims process was easy, and British Airways paid quickly.
6 “You’re lucky you got your money,” said Dale Kidd, a spokesman for the European Commission. “Generally, it depends on the airline, but some are better than others at paying claims.” So which airlines are the worst offenders? “I’d prefer not to do naming and shaming,” Mr. Kidd said. “It depends a lot on the persistence of the victim making the claim.”
7 One reason airlines have resisted this regulation is disagreement over who should be responsible for stranded travelers when major disruptions occur — like the volcanic ash cloud that caused more than 100,000 flight cancellations in Europe in 2010. “The ash cloud went on for eight or nine days, so it’s probably unreasonable to expect a carrier to put you up at the Hilton for that length of time,” Mr. Kidd conceded. Indeed, the airline industry says carriers lost nearly $2 billion because of the cloud, including expenses for hotel bills, although some airlines refused to pay these claims.

Adapted from The International Herald Tribune, August 31 – September 1, 2013.

No one knows why music has such a potent effect on our emotions. But thanks to some recent studies we have a few intriguing clues. Why do we like music? Like most good questions, this one works on many levels. We have answers on some levels, but not all.
We like music because it makes us feel good. Why does it make us feel good? In 2001, neuroscientists Anne Blood and Robert Zatorre at McGill University in Montreal provided an answer. Using magnetic resonance imaging they showed that people listening to pleasurable music had activated brain regions called the limbic and paralimbic areas, which are connected to euphoric reward responses, like those we experience from sex, good food and addictive drugs. Those rewards come from a gush of a neurotransmitter called dopamine. As DJ Lee Haslam told us, music is the drug. But why? It’s easy enough to understand why sex and food are rewarded with a dopamine rush: this makes us want more, and so contributes to our survival and propagation. (Some drugs subvert that survival instinct by stimulating dopamine release on false pretences.) But why would a sequence of sounds with no obvious survival value do the same thing?
The truth is no one knows. However, we now have many clues to why music provokes intense emotions. The current favourite theory among scientists who study the cognition of music – how we process it mentally – dates back to 1956, when the philosopher and composer Leonard Meyer suggested that emotion in music is all about what we expect, and whether or not we get it. Meyer drew on earlier psychological theories of emotion, which proposed that it arises when we’re unable to satisfy some desire. That, as you might imagine, creates frustration or anger – but if we then find what we’re looking for, be it love or a cigarette, the payoff is all the sweeter.
This, Meyer argued, is what music does too. It sets up sonic patterns and regularities that tempt us to make unconscious predictions about what’s coming next. If we’re right, the brain gives itself a little reward – as we’d now see it, a surge of dopamine. The constant dance between expectation and outcome thus enlivens the brain with a pleasurable play of emotions.

(www.bbc.com. Adaptado.)

No one knows why music has such a potent effect on our emotions. But thanks to some recent studies we have a few intriguing clues. Why do we like music? Like most good questions, this one works on many levels. We have answers on some levels, but not all.
We like music because it makes us feel good. Why does it make us feel good? In 2001, neuroscientists Anne Blood and Robert Zatorre at McGill University in Montreal provided an answer. Using magnetic resonance imaging they showed that people listening to pleasurable music had activated brain regions called the limbic and paralimbic areas, which are connected to euphoric reward responses, like those we experience from sex, good food and addictive drugs. Those rewards come from a gush of a neurotransmitter called dopamine. As DJ Lee Haslam told us, music is the drug. But why? It’s easy enough to understand why sex and food are rewarded with a dopamine rush: this makes us want more, and so contributes to our survival and propagation. (Some drugs subvert that survival instinct by stimulating dopamine release on false pretences.) But why would a sequence of sounds with no obvious survival value do the same thing?
The truth is no one knows. However, we now have many clues to why music provokes intense emotions. The current favourite theory among scientists who study the cognition of music – how we process it mentally – dates back to 1956, when the philosopher and composer Leonard Meyer suggested that emotion in music is all about what we expect, and whether or not we get it. Meyer drew on earlier psychological theories of emotion, which proposed that it arises when we’re unable to satisfy some desire. That, as you might imagine, creates frustration or anger – but if we then find what we’re looking for, be it love or a cigarette, the payoff is all the sweeter.
This, Meyer argued, is what music does too. It sets up sonic patterns and regularities that tempt us to make unconscious predictions about what’s coming next. If we’re right, the brain gives itself a little reward – as we’d now see it, a surge of dopamine. The constant dance between expectation and outcome thus enlivens the brain with a pleasurable play of emotions.

(www.bbc.com. Adaptado.)

No one knows why music has such a potent effect on our emotions. But thanks to some recent studies we have a few intriguing clues. Why do we like music? Like most good questions, this one works on many levels. We have answers on some levels, but not all.
We like music because it makes us feel good. Why does it make us feel good? In 2001, neuroscientists Anne Blood and Robert Zatorre at McGill University in Montreal provided an answer. Using magnetic resonance imaging they showed that people listening to pleasurable music had activated brain regions called the limbic and paralimbic areas, which are connected to euphoric reward responses, like those we experience from sex, good food and addictive drugs. Those rewards come from a gush of a neurotransmitter called dopamine. As DJ Lee Haslam told us, music is the drug. But why? It’s easy enough to understand why sex and food are rewarded with a dopamine rush: this makes us want more, and so contributes to our survival and propagation. (Some drugs subvert that survival instinct by stimulating dopamine release on false pretences.) But why would a sequence of sounds with no obvious survival value do the same thing?
The truth is no one knows. However, we now have many clues to why music provokes intense emotions. The current favourite theory among scientists who study the cognition of music – how we process it mentally – dates back to 1956, when the philosopher and composer Leonard Meyer suggested that emotion in music is all about what we expect, and whether or not we get it. Meyer drew on earlier psychological theories of emotion, which proposed that it arises when we’re unable to satisfy some desire. That, as you might imagine, creates frustration or anger – but if we then find what we’re looking for, be it love or a cigarette, the payoff is all the sweeter.
This, Meyer argued, is what music does too. It sets up sonic patterns and regularities that tempt us to make unconscious predictions about what’s coming next. If we’re right, the brain gives itself a little reward – as we’d now see it, a surge of dopamine. The constant dance between expectation and outcome thus enlivens the brain with a pleasurable play of emotions.

(www.bbc.com. Adaptado.)

No one knows why music has such a potent effect on our emotions. But thanks to some recent studies we have a few intriguing clues. Why do we like music? Like most good questions, this one works on many levels. We have answers on some levels, but not all.
We like music because it makes us feel good. Why does it make us feel good? In 2001, neuroscientists Anne Blood and Robert Zatorre at McGill University in Montreal provided an answer. Using magnetic resonance imaging they showed that people listening to pleasurable music had activated brain regions called the limbic and paralimbic areas, which are connected to euphoric reward responses, like those we experience from sex, good food and addictive drugs. Those rewards come from a gush of a neurotransmitter called dopamine. As DJ Lee Haslam told us, music is the drug. But why? It’s easy enough to understand why sex and food are rewarded with a dopamine rush: this makes us want more, and so contributes to our survival and propagation. (Some drugs subvert that survival instinct by stimulating dopamine release on false pretences.) But why would a sequence of sounds with no obvious survival value do the same thing?
The truth is no one knows. However, we now have many clues to why music provokes intense emotions. The current favourite theory among scientists who study the cognition of music – how we process it mentally – dates back to 1956, when the philosopher and composer Leonard Meyer suggested that emotion in music is all about what we expect, and whether or not we get it. Meyer drew on earlier psychological theories of emotion, which proposed that it arises when we’re unable to satisfy some desire. That, as you might imagine, creates frustration or anger – but if we then find what we’re looking for, be it love or a cigarette, the payoff is all the sweeter.
This, Meyer argued, is what music does too. It sets up sonic patterns and regularities that tempt us to make unconscious predictions about what’s coming next. If we’re right, the brain gives itself a little reward – as we’d now see it, a surge of dopamine. The constant dance between expectation and outcome thus enlivens the brain with a pleasurable play of emotions.

(www.bbc.com. Adaptado.)

No trecho final do segundo parágrafo – As DJ Lee Haslam
told us, music is the drug. –, é possível substituir a palavra as, sem alteração de sentido, por

No one knows why music has such a potent effect on our emotions. But thanks to some recent studies we have a few intriguing clues. Why do we like music? Like most good questions, this one works on many levels. We have answers on some levels, but not all.
We like music because it makes us feel good. Why does it make us feel good? In 2001, neuroscientists Anne Blood and Robert Zatorre at McGill University in Montreal provided an answer. Using magnetic resonance imaging they showed that people listening to pleasurable music had activated brain regions called the limbic and paralimbic areas, which are connected to euphoric reward responses, like those we experience from sex, good food and addictive drugs. Those rewards come from a gush of a neurotransmitter called dopamine. As DJ Lee Haslam told us, music is the drug. But why? It’s easy enough to understand why sex and food are rewarded with a dopamine rush: this makes us want more, and so contributes to our survival and propagation. (Some drugs subvert that survival instinct by stimulating dopamine release on false pretences.) But why would a sequence of sounds with no obvious survival value do the same thing?
The truth is no one knows. However, we now have many clues to why music provokes intense emotions. The current favourite theory among scientists who study the cognition of music – how we process it mentally – dates back to 1956, when the philosopher and composer Leonard Meyer suggested that emotion in music is all about what we expect, and whether or not we get it. Meyer drew on earlier psychological theories of emotion, which proposed that it arises when we’re unable to satisfy some desire. That, as you might imagine, creates frustration or anger – but if we then find what we’re looking for, be it love or a cigarette, the payoff is all the sweeter.
This, Meyer argued, is what music does too. It sets up sonic patterns and regularities that tempt us to make unconscious predictions about what’s coming next. If we’re right, the brain gives itself a little reward – as we’d now see it, a surge of dopamine. The constant dance between expectation and outcome thus enlivens the brain with a pleasurable play of emotions.

(www.bbc.com. Adaptado.)

A wave of anger is sweeping the cities of the world.

The protests have many different origins. In Brazil people rose up against bus fares, in Turkey against a building project. Indonesians have rejected higher fuel prices. In the euro zone they march against austerity, and the Arab spring has become a perma-protest against pretty much everything.
Yet just as in 1848, 1968 and 1989, when people also found a collective voice, the demonstrators have much in common. In one country after another, protesters have risen up with bewildering speed. They tend to be ordinary, middle-class people, not lobbies with lists of demands. Their mix of revelry and rage condemns the corruption, inefficiency and arrogance of the folk in charge.
Nobody can know how 2013 will change the world – if at all. In 1989 the Soviet empire teetered and fell. But Marx’s belief that 1848 was the first wave of a proletarian revolution was confounded by decades of flourishing capitalism and 1968 did more to change sex than politics. Even now, though, the inchoate significance of 2013 is discernible. And for politicians who want to peddle the same old stuff, news is not good.

A wave of anger is sweeping the cities of the world.

The protests have many different origins. In Brazil people rose up against bus fares, in Turkey against a building project. Indonesians have rejected higher fuel prices. In the euro zone they march against austerity, and the Arab spring has become a perma-protest against pretty much everything.
Yet just as in 1848, 1968 and 1989, when people also found a collective voice, the demonstrators have much in common. In one country after another, protesters have risen up with bewildering speed. They tend to be ordinary, middle-class people, not lobbies with lists of demands. Their mix of revelry and rage condemns the corruption, inefficiency and arrogance of the folk in charge.
Nobody can know how 2013 will change the world – if at all. In 1989 the Soviet empire teetered and fell. But Marx’s belief that 1848 was the first wave of a proletarian revolution was confounded by decades of flourishing capitalism and 1968 did more to change sex than politics. Even now, though, the inchoate significance of 2013 is discernible. And for politicians who want to peddle the same old stuff, news is not good.

No one knows why music has such a potent effect on our emotions. But thanks to some recent studies we have a few intriguing clues. Why do we like music? Like most good questions, this one works on many levels. We have answers on some levels, but not all.
We like music because it makes us feel good. Why does it make us feel good? In 2001, neuroscientists Anne Blood and Robert Zatorre at McGill University in Montreal provided an answer. Using magnetic resonance imaging they showed that people listening to pleasurable music had activated brain regions called the limbic and paralimbic areas, which are connected to euphoric reward responses, like those we experience from sex, good food and addictive drugs. Those rewards come from a gush of a neurotransmitter called dopamine. As DJ Lee Haslam told us, music is the drug. But why? It’s easy enough to understand why sex and food are rewarded with a dopamine rush: this makes us want more, and so contributes to our survival and propagation. (Some drugs subvert that survival instinct by stimulating dopamine release on false pretences.) But why would a sequence of sounds with no obvious survival value do the same thing?
The truth is no one knows. However, we now have many clues to why music provokes intense emotions. The current favourite theory among scientists who study the cognition of music – how we process it mentally – dates back to 1956, when the philosopher and composer Leonard Meyer suggested that emotion in music is all about what we expect, and whether or not we get it. Meyer drew on earlier psychological theories of emotion, which proposed that it arises when we’re unable to satisfy some desire. That, as you might imagine, creates frustration or anger – but if we then find what we’re looking for, be it love or a cigarette, the payoff is all the sweeter.
This, Meyer argued, is what music does too. It sets up sonic patterns and regularities that tempt us to make unconscious predictions about what’s coming next. If we’re right, the brain gives itself a little reward – as we’d now see it, a surge of dopamine. The constant dance between expectation and outcome thus enlivens the brain with a pleasurable play of emotions.

(www.bbc.com. Adaptado.)

To live the longest and healthiest life possible, get smarter. Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) data show that past a certain threshold, health and wealth are just weakly correlated. However, overall health is closely tied to how many years people spend in school. Mexico, for instance, has a fifth the per capita gross domestic product (GDP) of the United States, but, for women, more than 50 percent of the latter’s schooling.
In line with the trend, Mexico’s female adult mortality rate is only narrowly higher. Vietnam and Yemen have roughly equivalent per capita GDP. Yet Vietnamese women average 6.3 more years in school and are half as likely to die between the ages of 15 and 60. “Economic growth is also significantly associated with child mortality reductions, but the magnitude of the association is much smaller than that of increased education,” comments Emmanuela Gakidou, IHME’s director of education and training. “One year of schooling gives you about 10 percent lower mortality rates, whereas with a 10 percent increase in GDP, your mortality rate would go down only by 1 to 2 percent.”

To live the longest and healthiest life possible, get smarter. Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) data show that past a certain threshold, health and wealth are just weakly correlated. However, overall health is closely tied to how many years people spend in school. Mexico, for instance, has a fifth the per capita gross domestic product (GDP) of the United States, but, for women, more than 50 percent of the latter’s schooling.
In line with the trend, Mexico’s female adult mortality rate is only narrowly higher. Vietnam and Yemen have roughly equivalent per capita GDP. Yet Vietnamese women average 6.3 more years in school and are half as likely to die between the ages of 15 and 60. “Economic growth is also significantly associated with child mortality reductions, but the magnitude of the association is much smaller than that of increased education,” comments Emmanuela Gakidou, IHME’s director of education and training. “One year of schooling gives you about 10 percent lower mortality rates, whereas with a 10 percent increase in GDP, your mortality rate would go down only by 1 to 2 percent.”

No one knows why music has such a potent effect on our emotions. But thanks to some recent studies we have a few intriguing clues. Why do we like music? Like most good questions, this one works on many levels. We have answers on some levels, but not all.
We like music because it makes us feel good. Why does it make us feel good? In 2001, neuroscientists Anne Blood and Robert Zatorre at McGill University in Montreal provided an answer. Using magnetic resonance imaging they showed that people listening to pleasurable music had activated brain regions called the limbic and paralimbic areas, which are connected to euphoric reward responses, like those we experience from sex, good food and addictive drugs. Those rewards come from a gush of a neurotransmitter called dopamine. As DJ Lee Haslam told us, music is the drug. But why? It’s easy enough to understand why sex and food are rewarded with a dopamine rush: this makes us want more, and so contributes to our survival and propagation. (Some drugs subvert that survival instinct by stimulating dopamine release on false pretences.) But why would a sequence of sounds with no obvious survival value do the same thing?
The truth is no one knows. However, we now have many clues to why music provokes intense emotions. The current favourite theory among scientists who study the cognition of music – how we process it mentally – dates back to 1956, when the philosopher and composer Leonard Meyer suggested that emotion in music is all about what we expect, and whether or not we get it. Meyer drew on earlier psychological theories of emotion, which proposed that it arises when we’re unable to satisfy some desire. That, as you might imagine, creates frustration or anger – but if we then find what we’re looking for, be it love or a cigarette, the payoff is all the sweeter.
This, Meyer argued, is what music does too. It sets up sonic patterns and regularities that tempt us to make unconscious predictions about what’s coming next. If we’re right, the brain gives itself a little reward – as we’d now see it, a surge of dopamine. The constant dance between expectation and outcome thus enlivens the brain with a pleasurable play of emotions.

(www.bbc.com. Adaptado.)

To live the longest and healthiest life possible, get smarter. Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) data show that past a certain threshold, health and wealth are just weakly correlated. However, overall health is closely tied to how many years people spend in school. Mexico, for instance, has a fifth the per capita gross domestic product (GDP) of the United States, but, for women, more than 50 percent of the latter’s schooling.
In line with the trend, Mexico’s female adult mortality rate is only narrowly higher. Vietnam and Yemen have roughly equivalent per capita GDP. Yet Vietnamese women average 6.3 more years in school and are half as likely to die between the ages of 15 and 60. “Economic growth is also significantly associated with child mortality reductions, but the magnitude of the association is much smaller than that of increased education,” comments Emmanuela Gakidou, IHME’s director of education and training. “One year of schooling gives you about 10 percent lower mortality rates, whereas with a 10 percent increase in GDP, your mortality rate would go down only by 1 to 2 percent.”

No one knows why music has such a potent effect on our emotions. But thanks to some recent studies we have a few intriguing clues. Why do we like music? Like most good questions, this one works on many levels. We have answers on some levels, but not all.
We like music because it makes us feel good. Why does it make us feel good? In 2001, neuroscientists Anne Blood and Robert Zatorre at McGill University in Montreal provided an answer. Using magnetic resonance imaging they showed that people listening to pleasurable music had activated brain regions called the limbic and paralimbic areas, which are connected to euphoric reward responses, like those we experience from sex, good food and addictive drugs. Those rewards come from a gush of a neurotransmitter called dopamine. As DJ Lee Haslam told us, music is the drug. But why? It’s easy enough to understand why sex and food are rewarded with a dopamine rush: this makes us want more, and so contributes to our survival and propagation. (Some drugs subvert that survival instinct by stimulating dopamine release on false pretences.) But why would a sequence of sounds with no obvious survival value do the same thing?
The truth is no one knows. However, we now have many clues to why music provokes intense emotions. The current favourite theory among scientists who study the cognition of music – how we process it mentally – dates back to 1956, when the philosopher and composer Leonard Meyer suggested that emotion in music is all about what we expect, and whether or not we get it. Meyer drew on earlier psychological theories of emotion, which proposed that it arises when we’re unable to satisfy some desire. That, as you might imagine, creates frustration or anger – but if we then find what we’re looking for, be it love or a cigarette, the payoff is all the sweeter.
This, Meyer argued, is what music does too. It sets up sonic patterns and regularities that tempt us to make unconscious predictions about what’s coming next. If we’re right, the brain gives itself a little reward – as we’d now see it, a surge of dopamine. The constant dance between expectation and outcome thus enlivens the brain with a pleasurable play of emotions.

(www.bbc.com. Adaptado.)

Climate change: warm words and cool waters

There is a serious debate about why observed temperatures have not kept pace with computer-modelled predictions
September 1, 2013
Editorial The Guardian

Last week’s report that the current “pause” in global warming could be linked to cyclic cooling in the Pacific will be interpreted by climate sceptics as evidence that global warming isn’t happening, and by politicians as a reason to forget about climate change and carry on with business as usual. Both responses would be dangerously wrong.
There is no serious argument within climate science about the link between carbon dioxide levels and temperature. Between 1970 and 1998 the planet warmed at an average of 0.17C per decade, and from 1998 to 2012 at 0.04C per decade. Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, however, continued to rise and are now higher than at any time in the last 800,000 years. Twelve of the 14 warmest years on record have occurred since 2000; the last two years have been marked by catastrophic floods in Australia and recordbreaking temperatures in the US; and the loss of north polar ice has accelerated at such a rate that climate modellers expect the Arctic Ocean to be routinely ice-free in September after 2040.
There is, however, a serious debate about why the observed temperatures have not kept pace with computermodelled predictions and where the heat that should have registered on the global thermometer has hidden itself. One guess – supported by some sustained but still incomplete research – is that the deep oceans are warming: that is, the extra heat that should be measurable in the atmosphere has been absorbed by the sea. This is hardly good news: atmosphere and ocean play on each other, and any stored heat is 44 to be returned to the atmosphere sooner or later, in unpredictable ways. The real lesson from the latest finding is that there is a lot yet to be understood about how the planet works, and precisely how ocean and atmosphere distribute 45 from the equator to the poles.

(www.theguardian.com. Adaptado.)

Climate change: warm words and cool waters

There is a serious debate about why observed temperatures have not kept pace with computer-modelled predictions
September 1, 2013
Editorial The Guardian

Last week’s report that the current “pause” in global warming could be linked to cyclic cooling in the Pacific will be interpreted by climate sceptics as evidence that global warming isn’t happening, and by politicians as a reason to forget about climate change and carry on with business as usual. Both responses would be dangerously wrong.
There is no serious argument within climate science about the link between carbon dioxide levels and temperature. Between 1970 and 1998 the planet warmed at an average of 0.17C per decade, and from 1998 to 2012 at 0.04C per decade. Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, however, continued to rise and are now higher than at any time in the last 800,000 years. Twelve of the 14 warmest years on record have occurred since 2000; the last two years have been marked by catastrophic floods in Australia and recordbreaking temperatures in the US; and the loss of north polar ice has accelerated at such a rate that climate modellers expect the Arctic Ocean to be routinely ice-free in September after 2040.
There is, however, a serious debate about why the observed temperatures have not kept pace with computermodelled predictions and where the heat that should have registered on the global thermometer has hidden itself. One guess – supported by some sustained but still incomplete research – is that the deep oceans are warming: that is, the extra heat that should be measurable in the atmosphere has been absorbed by the sea. This is hardly good news: atmosphere and ocean play on each other, and any stored heat is 44 to be returned to the atmosphere sooner or later, in unpredictable ways. The real lesson from the latest finding is that there is a lot yet to be understood about how the planet works, and precisely how ocean and atmosphere distribute 45 from the equator to the poles.

(www.theguardian.com. Adaptado.)

Climate change: warm words and cool waters

There is a serious debate about why observed temperatures have not kept pace with computer-modelled predictions
September 1, 2013
Editorial The Guardian

Last week’s report that the current “pause” in global warming could be linked to cyclic cooling in the Pacific will be interpreted by climate sceptics as evidence that global warming isn’t happening, and by politicians as a reason to forget about climate change and carry on with business as usual. Both responses would be dangerously wrong.
There is no serious argument within climate science about the link between carbon dioxide levels and temperature. Between 1970 and 1998 the planet warmed at an average of 0.17C per decade, and from 1998 to 2012 at 0.04C per decade. Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, however, continued to rise and are now higher than at any time in the last 800,000 years. Twelve of the 14 warmest years on record have occurred since 2000; the last two years have been marked by catastrophic floods in Australia and recordbreaking temperatures in the US; and the loss of north polar ice has accelerated at such a rate that climate modellers expect the Arctic Ocean to be routinely ice-free in September after 2040.
There is, however, a serious debate about why the observed temperatures have not kept pace with computermodelled predictions and where the heat that should have registered on the global thermometer has hidden itself. One guess – supported by some sustained but still incomplete research – is that the deep oceans are warming: that is, the extra heat that should be measurable in the atmosphere has been absorbed by the sea. This is hardly good news: atmosphere and ocean play on each other, and any stored heat is 44 to be returned to the atmosphere sooner or later, in unpredictable ways. The real lesson from the latest finding is that there is a lot yet to be understood about how the planet works, and precisely how ocean and atmosphere distribute 45 from the equator to the poles.

(www.theguardian.com. Adaptado.)

Climate change: warm words and cool waters

There is a serious debate about why observed temperatures have not kept pace with computer-modelled predictions
September 1, 2013
Editorial The Guardian

Last week’s report that the current “pause” in global warming could be linked to cyclic cooling in the Pacific will be interpreted by climate sceptics as evidence that global warming isn’t happening, and by politicians as a reason to forget about climate change and carry on with business as usual. Both responses would be dangerously wrong.
There is no serious argument within climate science about the link between carbon dioxide levels and temperature. Between 1970 and 1998 the planet warmed at an average of 0.17C per decade, and from 1998 to 2012 at 0.04C per decade. Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, however, continued to rise and are now higher than at any time in the last 800,000 years. Twelve of the 14 warmest years on record have occurred since 2000; the last two years have been marked by catastrophic floods in Australia and recordbreaking temperatures in the US; and the loss of north polar ice has accelerated at such a rate that climate modellers expect the Arctic Ocean to be routinely ice-free in September after 2040.
There is, however, a serious debate about why the observed temperatures have not kept pace with computermodelled predictions and where the heat that should have registered on the global thermometer has hidden itself. One guess – supported by some sustained but still incomplete research – is that the deep oceans are warming: that is, the extra heat that should be measurable in the atmosphere has been absorbed by the sea. This is hardly good news: atmosphere and ocean play on each other, and any stored heat is 44 to be returned to the atmosphere sooner or later, in unpredictable ways. The real lesson from the latest finding is that there is a lot yet to be understood about how the planet works, and precisely how ocean and atmosphere distribute 45 from the equator to the poles.

(www.theguardian.com. Adaptado.)

Read the article and answer the question

The road to hell

(1) Bringing crops from one of the futuristic new farms in Brazil’s central and northern plains to foreign markets means taking a journey back in time. Loaded onto lorries, most are driven almost 2,000km south on narrow, potholed roads to the ports of Santos and Paranaguá. In the 19th and early 20th centuries they were used to bring in immigrants and ship out the coffee grown in the fertile states of São Paulo and Paraná, but now they are overwhelmed. Thanks to a record harvest this year, Brazil became the world’s largest soya producer, overtaking the United States. The queue of lorries waiting to enter Santos sometimes stretched to 40km.

(2) No part of that journey makes sense. Brazil has too few crop silos, so lorries are used for storage as well as transport, causing a crush at ports after harvest. Produce from so far north should probably not be travelling to southern ports at all. Freight by road costs twice as much as by rail and four times as much as by water. Brazilian farmers pay 25% or more of the value of their soya to bring it to port; their competitors in Iowa just 9%. The bottleneck at ports pushes costs higher still. It also puts off customers. In March Sunrise Group, China’s biggest soya trader, cancelled an order for 2m tonnes of Brazilian soya after repeated delays.

(3) All of Brazil’s infrastructure is decrepit. The World Economic Forum ranks it at 114th out of 148 countries. After a spate of railway-building at the turn of the 20th century, and road- and dam-building 50 years later, little was added or even maintained. In the 1980s infrastructure was a casualty of slowing growth and spiralling inflation. Unable to find jobs, engineers emigrated or retrained. Government stopped planning for the long term. According to Contas Abertas, a public-spending watchdog, only a fifth of federal money budgeted for urban transport in the past decade was actually spent. Just 1.5% of Brazil’s GDP goes on infrastructure investment from all sources, both public and private. The long-run global average is 3.8%. The McKinsey Global Institute estimates the total value of Brazil’s infrastructure at 16% of GDP. Other big economies average 71%. To catch up, Brazil would have to triple its annual infrastructure spending for the next 20 years.

(4) Moreover, it may be getting poor value from what little it does invest because so much goes on the wrong things. A cumbersome environmental-licensing process pushes up costs and causes delays. Expensive studies are required before construction on big projects can start and then again at various stages along the way and at the end. Farmers and manufacturers spend heavily on lorries because road transport is their only option. But that is working around the problem, not solving it.

(5) In the 1990s Mr Cardoso’s government privatised state-owned oil, energy and telecoms firms. It allowed private operators to lease terminals in public ports and to build their own new ports. Imports were booming as the economy opened up, so container terminals were a priority. The one at the public port in Bahia’s capital, Salvador, is an example of the transformation wrought by private money and management. Its customers used to rate it Brazil’s worst port, with a draft too shallow for big ships and a quay so short that even smaller vessels had to unload a bit at a time. But in the past decade its operator, Wilson & Sons, spent 260m reais on replacing equipment, lengthening the quay and deepening the draft. Capacity has doubled. Land access will improve, too, once an almost finished expressway opens. Paranaguá is spending 400m reais from its own revenues on replacing outdated equipment, but without private money it cannot expand enough to end the queues to dock. It has drawn up detailed plans to build a new terminal and two new quays, and identified 20 dockside areas that could be leased to new operators, which would bring in 1.6 billion reais of private investment. All that is missing is the federal government’s permission. It hopes to get it next year, but there is no guarantee.

(6) Firms that want to build their own infrastructure, such as mining companies, which need dedicated railways and ports, can generally build at will in Brazil, though they still face the hassle of environmental licensing. If the government wants to hand a project to the private sector it will hold an auction, granting the concession to the highest bidder, or sometimes the applicant who promises the lowest user charges. But since Lula came to power in 2003 there have been few infrastructure auctions of any kind. In recent years, under heavy lobbying from public ports, the ports regulator stopped granting operating licences to private ports except those intended mainly for the owners’ own cargo. As a result, during a decade in which Brazil became a commodity-exporting powerhouse, its bulk-cargo terminals hardly expanded at all.

(7) At first Lula’s government planned to upgrade Brazil’s infrastructure without private help. In 2007 the president announced a collection of long-mooted public construction projects, the Growth Acceleration Programme (PAC). Many were intended to give farming and mining regions access to alternative ports. But the results have been disappointing. Two-thirds of the biggest projects are late and over budget. The trans-north-eastern railway is only half-built and its cost has doubled. The route of the east-west integration railway, which would cross Bahia, has still not been settled. The northern stretch of the BR-163, a trunk road built in the 1970s, was waiting so long to be paved that locals started calling it the “endless road”. Most of it is still waiting.

(8) What has got things moving is the prospect of disgrace during the forthcoming big sporting events. Brazil’s terrible airports will be the first thing most foreign football fans see when they arrive for next year’s World Cup. Infraero, the state-owned company that runs them, was meant to be getting them ready for the extra traffic, but it is a byword for incompetence. Between 2007 and 2010 it managed to spend just 800m of the 3 billion reais it was supposed to invest. In desperation, the government last year leased three of the biggest airports to private operators.

(9) That seemed to break a bigger logjam. First more airport auctions were mooted; then, some months later, Ms Rousseff announced that 7,500km of toll roads and 10,000km of railways were to be auctioned too. Earlier this year she picked the biggest fight of her presidency, pushing a ports bill through Congress against lobbying from powerful vested interests. The new law enables private ports once again to handle third-party cargo and allows them to hire their own staff, rather than having to use casual labour from the dockworkers’ unions that have a monopoly in public ports. Ms Rousseff also promised to auction some entirely new projects and to re-tender around 150 contracts in public terminals whose concessions had expired.

(10) Would-be investors in port projects are hanging back because of the high chances of cost overruns and long delays. Two newly built private terminals at Santos that together cost more than 4 billion reais illustrate the risks. Both took years to get off the ground and years more to build. Both were finished earlier this year but remained idle for months. Brasil Terminal Portuário, a private terminal within the public port, is still waiting for the government to dredge its access channel. At Embraport, which is outside the public-port area, union members from Santos blocked road access and boarded any ships that tried to dock. Rather than enforcing the law that allows such terminals to use their own workers, the government summoned the management to Brasília for some arm-twisting. In August Embraport agreed to take the union members “on a trial basis”.

(11) Given such regulatory and execution risks, there are unlikely to be many takers for either rail or port projects as currently conceived, says Bruno Savaris, an infrastructure analyst at Credit Suisse. He predicts that at most a third of the planned investments will be auctioned in the next three years: airports, a few simple port projects and the best toll roads. That is far short of what Brazil needs. The good news, says Mr Savaris, is that the government is at last beginning to understand that it must either reduce the risks for private investors or raise their returns. Private know-how and money will be vital to get Brazil moving again.

(www.economist.com/news/special-report. Adapted)

Read the article and answer the question

The road to hell

(1) Bringing crops from one of the futuristic new farms in Brazil’s central and northern plains to foreign markets means taking a journey back in time. Loaded onto lorries, most are driven almost 2,000km south on narrow, potholed roads to the ports of Santos and Paranaguá. In the 19th and early 20th centuries they were used to bring in immigrants and ship out the coffee grown in the fertile states of São Paulo and Paraná, but now they are overwhelmed. Thanks to a record harvest this year, Brazil became the world’s largest soya producer, overtaking the United States. The queue of lorries waiting to enter Santos sometimes stretched to 40km.

(2) No part of that journey makes sense. Brazil has too few crop silos, so lorries are used for storage as well as transport, causing a crush at ports after harvest. Produce from so far north should probably not be travelling to southern ports at all. Freight by road costs twice as much as by rail and four times as much as by water. Brazilian farmers pay 25% or more of the value of their soya to bring it to port; their competitors in Iowa just 9%. The bottleneck at ports pushes costs higher still. It also puts off customers. In March Sunrise Group, China’s biggest soya trader, cancelled an order for 2m tonnes of Brazilian soya after repeated delays.

(3) All of Brazil’s infrastructure is decrepit. The World Economic Forum ranks it at 114th out of 148 countries. After a spate of railway-building at the turn of the 20th century, and road- and dam-building 50 years later, little was added or even maintained. In the 1980s infrastructure was a casualty of slowing growth and spiralling inflation. Unable to find jobs, engineers emigrated or retrained. Government stopped planning for the long term. According to Contas Abertas, a public-spending watchdog, only a fifth of federal money budgeted for urban transport in the past decade was actually spent. Just 1.5% of Brazil’s GDP goes on infrastructure investment from all sources, both public and private. The long-run global average is 3.8%. The McKinsey Global Institute estimates the total value of Brazil’s infrastructure at 16% of GDP. Other big economies average 71%. To catch up, Brazil would have to triple its annual infrastructure spending for the next 20 years.

(4) Moreover, it may be getting poor value from what little it does invest because so much goes on the wrong things. A cumbersome environmental-licensing process pushes up costs and causes delays. Expensive studies are required before construction on big projects can start and then again at various stages along the way and at the end. Farmers and manufacturers spend heavily on lorries because road transport is their only option. But that is working around the problem, not solving it.

(5) In the 1990s Mr Cardoso’s government privatised state-owned oil, energy and telecoms firms. It allowed private operators to lease terminals in public ports and to build their own new ports. Imports were booming as the economy opened up, so container terminals were a priority. The one at the public port in Bahia’s capital, Salvador, is an example of the transformation wrought by private money and management. Its customers used to rate it Brazil’s worst port, with a draft too shallow for big ships and a quay so short that even smaller vessels had to unload a bit at a time. But in the past decade its operator, Wilson & Sons, spent 260m reais on replacing equipment, lengthening the quay and deepening the draft. Capacity has doubled. Land access will improve, too, once an almost finished expressway opens. Paranaguá is spending 400m reais from its own revenues on replacing outdated equipment, but without private money it cannot expand enough to end the queues to dock. It has drawn up detailed plans to build a new terminal and two new quays, and identified 20 dockside areas that could be leased to new operators, which would bring in 1.6 billion reais of private investment. All that is missing is the federal government’s permission. It hopes to get it next year, but there is no guarantee.

(6) Firms that want to build their own infrastructure, such as mining companies, which need dedicated railways and ports, can generally build at will in Brazil, though they still face the hassle of environmental licensing. If the government wants to hand a project to the private sector it will hold an auction, granting the concession to the highest bidder, or sometimes the applicant who promises the lowest user charges. But since Lula came to power in 2003 there have been few infrastructure auctions of any kind. In recent years, under heavy lobbying from public ports, the ports regulator stopped granting operating licences to private ports except those intended mainly for the owners’ own cargo. As a result, during a decade in which Brazil became a commodity-exporting powerhouse, its bulk-cargo terminals hardly expanded at all.

(7) At first Lula’s government planned to upgrade Brazil’s infrastructure without private help. In 2007 the president announced a collection of long-mooted public construction projects, the Growth Acceleration Programme (PAC). Many were intended to give farming and mining regions access to alternative ports. But the results have been disappointing. Two-thirds of the biggest projects are late and over budget. The trans-north-eastern railway is only half-built and its cost has doubled. The route of the east-west integration railway, which would cross Bahia, has still not been settled. The northern stretch of the BR-163, a trunk road built in the 1970s, was waiting so long to be paved that locals started calling it the “endless road”. Most of it is still waiting.

(8) What has got things moving is the prospect of disgrace during the forthcoming big sporting events. Brazil’s terrible airports will be the first thing most foreign football fans see when they arrive for next year’s World Cup. Infraero, the state-owned company that runs them, was meant to be getting them ready for the extra traffic, but it is a byword for incompetence. Between 2007 and 2010 it managed to spend just 800m of the 3 billion reais it was supposed to invest. In desperation, the government last year leased three of the biggest airports to private operators.

(9) That seemed to break a bigger logjam. First more airport auctions were mooted; then, some months later, Ms Rousseff announced that 7,500km of toll roads and 10,000km of railways were to be auctioned too. Earlier this year she picked the biggest fight of her presidency, pushing a ports bill through Congress against lobbying from powerful vested interests. The new law enables private ports once again to handle third-party cargo and allows them to hire their own staff, rather than having to use casual labour from the dockworkers’ unions that have a monopoly in public ports. Ms Rousseff also promised to auction some entirely new projects and to re-tender around 150 contracts in public terminals whose concessions had expired.

(10) Would-be investors in port projects are hanging back because of the high chances of cost overruns and long delays. Two newly built private terminals at Santos that together cost more than 4 billion reais illustrate the risks. Both took years to get off the ground and years more to build. Both were finished earlier this year but remained idle for months. Brasil Terminal Portuário, a private terminal within the public port, is still waiting for the government to dredge its access channel. At Embraport, which is outside the public-port area, union members from Santos blocked road access and boarded any ships that tried to dock. Rather than enforcing the law that allows such terminals to use their own workers, the government summoned the management to Brasília for some arm-twisting. In August Embraport agreed to take the union members “on a trial basis”.

(11) Given such regulatory and execution risks, there are unlikely to be many takers for either rail or port projects as currently conceived, says Bruno Savaris, an infrastructure analyst at Credit Suisse. He predicts that at most a third of the planned investments will be auctioned in the next three years: airports, a few simple port projects and the best toll roads. That is far short of what Brazil needs. The good news, says Mr Savaris, is that the government is at last beginning to understand that it must either reduce the risks for private investors or raise their returns. Private know-how and money will be vital to get Brazil moving again.

(www.economist.com/news/special-report. Adapted)

Read the article and answer the question

The road to hell

(1) Bringing crops from one of the futuristic new farms in Brazil’s central and northern plains to foreign markets means taking a journey back in time. Loaded onto lorries, most are driven almost 2,000km south on narrow, potholed roads to the ports of Santos and Paranaguá. In the 19th and early 20th centuries they were used to bring in immigrants and ship out the coffee grown in the fertile states of São Paulo and Paraná, but now they are overwhelmed. Thanks to a record harvest this year, Brazil became the world’s largest soya producer, overtaking the United States. The queue of lorries waiting to enter Santos sometimes stretched to 40km.

(2) No part of that journey makes sense. Brazil has too few crop silos, so lorries are used for storage as well as transport, causing a crush at ports after harvest. Produce from so far north should probably not be travelling to southern ports at all. Freight by road costs twice as much as by rail and four times as much as by water. Brazilian farmers pay 25% or more of the value of their soya to bring it to port; their competitors in Iowa just 9%. The bottleneck at ports pushes costs higher still. It also puts off customers. In March Sunrise Group, China’s biggest soya trader, cancelled an order for 2m tonnes of Brazilian soya after repeated delays.

(3) All of Brazil’s infrastructure is decrepit. The World Economic Forum ranks it at 114th out of 148 countries. After a spate of railway-building at the turn of the 20th century, and road- and dam-building 50 years later, little was added or even maintained. In the 1980s infrastructure was a casualty of slowing growth and spiralling inflation. Unable to find jobs, engineers emigrated or retrained. Government stopped planning for the long term. According to Contas Abertas, a public-spending watchdog, only a fifth of federal money budgeted for urban transport in the past decade was actually spent. Just 1.5% of Brazil’s GDP goes on infrastructure investment from all sources, both public and private. The long-run global average is 3.8%. The McKinsey Global Institute estimates the total value of Brazil’s infrastructure at 16% of GDP. Other big economies average 71%. To catch up, Brazil would have to triple its annual infrastructure spending for the next 20 years.

(4) Moreover, it may be getting poor value from what little it does invest because so much goes on the wrong things. A cumbersome environmental-licensing process pushes up costs and causes delays. Expensive studies are required before construction on big projects can start and then again at various stages along the way and at the end. Farmers and manufacturers spend heavily on lorries because road transport is their only option. But that is working around the problem, not solving it.

(5) In the 1990s Mr Cardoso’s government privatised state-owned oil, energy and telecoms firms. It allowed private operators to lease terminals in public ports and to build their own new ports. Imports were booming as the economy opened up, so container terminals were a priority. The one at the public port in Bahia’s capital, Salvador, is an example of the transformation wrought by private money and management. Its customers used to rate it Brazil’s worst port, with a draft too shallow for big ships and a quay so short that even smaller vessels had to unload a bit at a time. But in the past decade its operator, Wilson & Sons, spent 260m reais on replacing equipment, lengthening the quay and deepening the draft. Capacity has doubled. Land access will improve, too, once an almost finished expressway opens. Paranaguá is spending 400m reais from its own revenues on replacing outdated equipment, but without private money it cannot expand enough to end the queues to dock. It has drawn up detailed plans to build a new terminal and two new quays, and identified 20 dockside areas that could be leased to new operators, which would bring in 1.6 billion reais of private investment. All that is missing is the federal government’s permission. It hopes to get it next year, but there is no guarantee.

(6) Firms that want to build their own infrastructure, such as mining companies, which need dedicated railways and ports, can generally build at will in Brazil, though they still face the hassle of environmental licensing. If the government wants to hand a project to the private sector it will hold an auction, granting the concession to the highest bidder, or sometimes the applicant who promises the lowest user charges. But since Lula came to power in 2003 there have been few infrastructure auctions of any kind. In recent years, under heavy lobbying from public ports, the ports regulator stopped granting operating licences to private ports except those intended mainly for the owners’ own cargo. As a result, during a decade in which Brazil became a commodity-exporting powerhouse, its bulk-cargo terminals hardly expanded at all.

(7) At first Lula’s government planned to upgrade Brazil’s infrastructure without private help. In 2007 the president announced a collection of long-mooted public construction projects, the Growth Acceleration Programme (PAC). Many were intended to give farming and mining regions access to alternative ports. But the results have been disappointing. Two-thirds of the biggest projects are late and over budget. The trans-north-eastern railway is only half-built and its cost has doubled. The route of the east-west integration railway, which would cross Bahia, has still not been settled. The northern stretch of the BR-163, a trunk road built in the 1970s, was waiting so long to be paved that locals started calling it the “endless road”. Most of it is still waiting.

(8) What has got things moving is the prospect of disgrace during the forthcoming big sporting events. Brazil’s terrible airports will be the first thing most foreign football fans see when they arrive for next year’s World Cup. Infraero, the state-owned company that runs them, was meant to be getting them ready for the extra traffic, but it is a byword for incompetence. Between 2007 and 2010 it managed to spend just 800m of the 3 billion reais it was supposed to invest. In desperation, the government last year leased three of the biggest airports to private operators.

(9) That seemed to break a bigger logjam. First more airport auctions were mooted; then, some months later, Ms Rousseff announced that 7,500km of toll roads and 10,000km of railways were to be auctioned too. Earlier this year she picked the biggest fight of her presidency, pushing a ports bill through Congress against lobbying from powerful vested interests. The new law enables private ports once again to handle third-party cargo and allows them to hire their own staff, rather than having to use casual labour from the dockworkers’ unions that have a monopoly in public ports. Ms Rousseff also promised to auction some entirely new projects and to re-tender around 150 contracts in public terminals whose concessions had expired.

(10) Would-be investors in port projects are hanging back because of the high chances of cost overruns and long delays. Two newly built private terminals at Santos that together cost more than 4 billion reais illustrate the risks. Both took years to get off the ground and years more to build. Both were finished earlier this year but remained idle for months. Brasil Terminal Portuário, a private terminal within the public port, is still waiting for the government to dredge its access channel. At Embraport, which is outside the public-port area, union members from Santos blocked road access and boarded any ships that tried to dock. Rather than enforcing the law that allows such terminals to use their own workers, the government summoned the management to Brasília for some arm-twisting. In August Embraport agreed to take the union members “on a trial basis”.

(11) Given such regulatory and execution risks, there are unlikely to be many takers for either rail or port projects as currently conceived, says Bruno Savaris, an infrastructure analyst at Credit Suisse. He predicts that at most a third of the planned investments will be auctioned in the next three years: airports, a few simple port projects and the best toll roads. That is far short of what Brazil needs. The good news, says Mr Savaris, is that the government is at last beginning to understand that it must either reduce the risks for private investors or raise their returns. Private know-how and money will be vital to get Brazil moving again.

(www.economist.com/news/special-report. Adapted)

Read the article and answer the question

The road to hell

(1) Bringing crops from one of the futuristic new farms in Brazil’s central and northern plains to foreign markets means taking a journey back in time. Loaded onto lorries, most are driven almost 2,000km south on narrow, potholed roads to the ports of Santos and Paranaguá. In the 19th and early 20th centuries they were used to bring in immigrants and ship out the coffee grown in the fertile states of São Paulo and Paraná, but now they are overwhelmed. Thanks to a record harvest this year, Brazil became the world’s largest soya producer, overtaking the United States. The queue of lorries waiting to enter Santos sometimes stretched to 40km.

(2) No part of that journey makes sense. Brazil has too few crop silos, so lorries are used for storage as well as transport, causing a crush at ports after harvest. Produce from so far north should probably not be travelling to southern ports at all. Freight by road costs twice as much as by rail and four times as much as by water. Brazilian farmers pay 25% or more of the value of their soya to bring it to port; their competitors in Iowa just 9%. The bottleneck at ports pushes costs higher still. It also puts off customers. In March Sunrise Group, China’s biggest soya trader, cancelled an order for 2m tonnes of Brazilian soya after repeated delays.

(3) All of Brazil’s infrastructure is decrepit. The World Economic Forum ranks it at 114th out of 148 countries. After a spate of railway-building at the turn of the 20th century, and road- and dam-building 50 years later, little was added or even maintained. In the 1980s infrastructure was a casualty of slowing growth and spiralling inflation. Unable to find jobs, engineers emigrated or retrained. Government stopped planning for the long term. According to Contas Abertas, a public-spending watchdog, only a fifth of federal money budgeted for urban transport in the past decade was actually spent. Just 1.5% of Brazil’s GDP goes on infrastructure investment from all sources, both public and private. The long-run global average is 3.8%. The McKinsey Global Institute estimates the total value of Brazil’s infrastructure at 16% of GDP. Other big economies average 71%. To catch up, Brazil would have to triple its annual infrastructure spending for the next 20 years.

(4) Moreover, it may be getting poor value from what little it does invest because so much goes on the wrong things. A cumbersome environmental-licensing process pushes up costs and causes delays. Expensive studies are required before construction on big projects can start and then again at various stages along the way and at the end. Farmers and manufacturers spend heavily on lorries because road transport is their only option. But that is working around the problem, not solving it.

(5) In the 1990s Mr Cardoso’s government privatised state-owned oil, energy and telecoms firms. It allowed private operators to lease terminals in public ports and to build their own new ports. Imports were booming as the economy opened up, so container terminals were a priority. The one at the public port in Bahia’s capital, Salvador, is an example of the transformation wrought by private money and management. Its customers used to rate it Brazil’s worst port, with a draft too shallow for big ships and a quay so short that even smaller vessels had to unload a bit at a time. But in the past decade its operator, Wilson & Sons, spent 260m reais on replacing equipment, lengthening the quay and deepening the draft. Capacity has doubled. Land access will improve, too, once an almost finished expressway opens. Paranaguá is spending 400m reais from its own revenues on replacing outdated equipment, but without private money it cannot expand enough to end the queues to dock. It has drawn up detailed plans to build a new terminal and two new quays, and identified 20 dockside areas that could be leased to new operators, which would bring in 1.6 billion reais of private investment. All that is missing is the federal government’s permission. It hopes to get it next year, but there is no guarantee.

(6) Firms that want to build their own infrastructure, such as mining companies, which need dedicated railways and ports, can generally build at will in Brazil, though they still face the hassle of environmental licensing. If the government wants to hand a project to the private sector it will hold an auction, granting the concession to the highest bidder, or sometimes the applicant who promises the lowest user charges. But since Lula came to power in 2003 there have been few infrastructure auctions of any kind. In recent years, under heavy lobbying from public ports, the ports regulator stopped granting operating licences to private ports except those intended mainly for the owners’ own cargo. As a result, during a decade in which Brazil became a commodity-exporting powerhouse, its bulk-cargo terminals hardly expanded at all.

(7) At first Lula’s government planned to upgrade Brazil’s infrastructure without private help. In 2007 the president announced a collection of long-mooted public construction projects, the Growth Acceleration Programme (PAC). Many were intended to give farming and mining regions access to alternative ports. But the results have been disappointing. Two-thirds of the biggest projects are late and over budget. The trans-north-eastern railway is only half-built and its cost has doubled. The route of the east-west integration railway, which would cross Bahia, has still not been settled. The northern stretch of the BR-163, a trunk road built in the 1970s, was waiting so long to be paved that locals started calling it the “endless road”. Most of it is still waiting.

(8) What has got things moving is the prospect of disgrace during the forthcoming big sporting events. Brazil’s terrible airports will be the first thing most foreign football fans see when they arrive for next year’s World Cup. Infraero, the state-owned company that runs them, was meant to be getting them ready for the extra traffic, but it is a byword for incompetence. Between 2007 and 2010 it managed to spend just 800m of the 3 billion reais it was supposed to invest. In desperation, the government last year leased three of the biggest airports to private operators.

(9) That seemed to break a bigger logjam. First more airport auctions were mooted; then, some months later, Ms Rousseff announced that 7,500km of toll roads and 10,000km of railways were to be auctioned too. Earlier this year she picked the biggest fight of her presidency, pushing a ports bill through Congress against lobbying from powerful vested interests. The new law enables private ports once again to handle third-party cargo and allows them to hire their own staff, rather than having to use casual labour from the dockworkers’ unions that have a monopoly in public ports. Ms Rousseff also promised to auction some entirely new projects and to re-tender around 150 contracts in public terminals whose concessions had expired.

(10) Would-be investors in port projects are hanging back because of the high chances of cost overruns and long delays. Two newly built private terminals at Santos that together cost more than 4 billion reais illustrate the risks. Both took years to get off the ground and years more to build. Both were finished earlier this year but remained idle for months. Brasil Terminal Portuário, a private terminal within the public port, is still waiting for the government to dredge its access channel. At Embraport, which is outside the public-port area, union members from Santos blocked road access and boarded any ships that tried to dock. Rather than enforcing the law that allows such terminals to use their own workers, the government summoned the management to Brasília for some arm-twisting. In August Embraport agreed to take the union members “on a trial basis”.

(11) Given such regulatory and execution risks, there are unlikely to be many takers for either rail or port projects as currently conceived, says Bruno Savaris, an infrastructure analyst at Credit Suisse. He predicts that at most a third of the planned investments will be auctioned in the next three years: airports, a few simple port projects and the best toll roads. That is far short of what Brazil needs. The good news, says Mr Savaris, is that the government is at last beginning to understand that it must either reduce the risks for private investors or raise their returns. Private know-how and money will be vital to get Brazil moving again.

(www.economist.com/news/special-report. Adapted)

Read the article and answer the question

The road to hell

(1) Bringing crops from one of the futuristic new farms in Brazil’s central and northern plains to foreign markets means taking a journey back in time. Loaded onto lorries, most are driven almost 2,000km south on narrow, potholed roads to the ports of Santos and Paranaguá. In the 19th and early 20th centuries they were used to bring in immigrants and ship out the coffee grown in the fertile states of São Paulo and Paraná, but now they are overwhelmed. Thanks to a record harvest this year, Brazil became the world’s largest soya producer, overtaking the United States. The queue of lorries waiting to enter Santos sometimes stretched to 40km.

(2) No part of that journey makes sense. Brazil has too few crop silos, so lorries are used for storage as well as transport, causing a crush at ports after harvest. Produce from so far north should probably not be travelling to southern ports at all. Freight by road costs twice as much as by rail and four times as much as by water. Brazilian farmers pay 25% or more of the value of their soya to bring it to port; their competitors in Iowa just 9%. The bottleneck at ports pushes costs higher still. It also puts off customers. In March Sunrise Group, China’s biggest soya trader, cancelled an order for 2m tonnes of Brazilian soya after repeated delays.

(3) All of Brazil’s infrastructure is decrepit. The World Economic Forum ranks it at 114th out of 148 countries. After a spate of railway-building at the turn of the 20th century, and road- and dam-building 50 years later, little was added or even maintained. In the 1980s infrastructure was a casualty of slowing growth and spiralling inflation. Unable to find jobs, engineers emigrated or retrained. Government stopped planning for the long term. According to Contas Abertas, a public-spending watchdog, only a fifth of federal money budgeted for urban transport in the past decade was actually spent. Just 1.5% of Brazil’s GDP goes on infrastructure investment from all sources, both public and private. The long-run global average is 3.8%. The McKinsey Global Institute estimates the total value of Brazil’s infrastructure at 16% of GDP. Other big economies average 71%. To catch up, Brazil would have to triple its annual infrastructure spending for the next 20 years.

(4) Moreover, it may be getting poor value from what little it does invest because so much goes on the wrong things. A cumbersome environmental-licensing process pushes up costs and causes delays. Expensive studies are required before construction on big projects can start and then again at various stages along the way and at the end. Farmers and manufacturers spend heavily on lorries because road transport is their only option. But that is working around the problem, not solving it.

(5) In the 1990s Mr Cardoso’s government privatised state-owned oil, energy and telecoms firms. It allowed private operators to lease terminals in public ports and to build their own new ports. Imports were booming as the economy opened up, so container terminals were a priority. The one at the public port in Bahia’s capital, Salvador, is an example of the transformation wrought by private money and management. Its customers used to rate it Brazil’s worst port, with a draft too shallow for big ships and a quay so short that even smaller vessels had to unload a bit at a time. But in the past decade its operator, Wilson & Sons, spent 260m reais on replacing equipment, lengthening the quay and deepening the draft. Capacity has doubled. Land access will improve, too, once an almost finished expressway opens. Paranaguá is spending 400m reais from its own revenues on replacing outdated equipment, but without private money it cannot expand enough to end the queues to dock. It has drawn up detailed plans to build a new terminal and two new quays, and identified 20 dockside areas that could be leased to new operators, which would bring in 1.6 billion reais of private investment. All that is missing is the federal government’s permission. It hopes to get it next year, but there is no guarantee.

(6) Firms that want to build their own infrastructure, such as mining companies, which need dedicated railways and ports, can generally build at will in Brazil, though they still face the hassle of environmental licensing. If the government wants to hand a project to the private sector it will hold an auction, granting the concession to the highest bidder, or sometimes the applicant who promises the lowest user charges. But since Lula came to power in 2003 there have been few infrastructure auctions of any kind. In recent years, under heavy lobbying from public ports, the ports regulator stopped granting operating licences to private ports except those intended mainly for the owners’ own cargo. As a result, during a decade in which Brazil became a commodity-exporting powerhouse, its bulk-cargo terminals hardly expanded at all.

(7) At first Lula’s government planned to upgrade Brazil’s infrastructure without private help. In 2007 the president announced a collection of long-mooted public construction projects, the Growth Acceleration Programme (PAC). Many were intended to give farming and mining regions access to alternative ports. But the results have been disappointing. Two-thirds of the biggest projects are late and over budget. The trans-north-eastern railway is only half-built and its cost has doubled. The route of the east-west integration railway, which would cross Bahia, has still not been settled. The northern stretch of the BR-163, a trunk road built in the 1970s, was waiting so long to be paved that locals started calling it the “endless road”. Most of it is still waiting.

(8) What has got things moving is the prospect of disgrace during the forthcoming big sporting events. Brazil’s terrible airports will be the first thing most foreign football fans see when they arrive for next year’s World Cup. Infraero, the state-owned company that runs them, was meant to be getting them ready for the extra traffic, but it is a byword for incompetence. Between 2007 and 2010 it managed to spend just 800m of the 3 billion reais it was supposed to invest. In desperation, the government last year leased three of the biggest airports to private operators.

(9) That seemed to break a bigger logjam. First more airport auctions were mooted; then, some months later, Ms Rousseff announced that 7,500km of toll roads and 10,000km of railways were to be auctioned too. Earlier this year she picked the biggest fight of her presidency, pushing a ports bill through Congress against lobbying from powerful vested interests. The new law enables private ports once again to handle third-party cargo and allows them to hire their own staff, rather than having to use casual labour from the dockworkers’ unions that have a monopoly in public ports. Ms Rousseff also promised to auction some entirely new projects and to re-tender around 150 contracts in public terminals whose concessions had expired.

(10) Would-be investors in port projects are hanging back because of the high chances of cost overruns and long delays. Two newly built private terminals at Santos that together cost more than 4 billion reais illustrate the risks. Both took years to get off the ground and years more to build. Both were finished earlier this year but remained idle for months. Brasil Terminal Portuário, a private terminal within the public port, is still waiting for the government to dredge its access channel. At Embraport, which is outside the public-port area, union members from Santos blocked road access and boarded any ships that tried to dock. Rather than enforcing the law that allows such terminals to use their own workers, the government summoned the management to Brasília for some arm-twisting. In August Embraport agreed to take the union members “on a trial basis”.

(11) Given such regulatory and execution risks, there are unlikely to be many takers for either rail or port projects as currently conceived, says Bruno Savaris, an infrastructure analyst at Credit Suisse. He predicts that at most a third of the planned investments will be auctioned in the next three years: airports, a few simple port projects and the best toll roads. That is far short of what Brazil needs. The good news, says Mr Savaris, is that the government is at last beginning to understand that it must either reduce the risks for private investors or raise their returns. Private know-how and money will be vital to get Brazil moving again.

(www.economist.com/news/special-report. Adapted)

Read the article and answer the question

The road to hell

(1) Bringing crops from one of the futuristic new farms in Brazil’s central and northern plains to foreign markets means taking a journey back in time. Loaded onto lorries, most are driven almost 2,000km south on narrow, potholed roads to the ports of Santos and Paranaguá. In the 19th and early 20th centuries they were used to bring in immigrants and ship out the coffee grown in the fertile states of São Paulo and Paraná, but now they are overwhelmed. Thanks to a record harvest this year, Brazil became the world’s largest soya producer, overtaking the United States. The queue of lorries waiting to enter Santos sometimes stretched to 40km.

(2) No part of that journey makes sense. Brazil has too few crop silos, so lorries are used for storage as well as transport, causing a crush at ports after harvest. Produce from so far north should probably not be travelling to southern ports at all. Freight by road costs twice as much as by rail and four times as much as by water. Brazilian farmers pay 25% or more of the value of their soya to bring it to port; their competitors in Iowa just 9%. The bottleneck at ports pushes costs higher still. It also puts off customers. In March Sunrise Group, China’s biggest soya trader, cancelled an order for 2m tonnes of Brazilian soya after repeated delays.

(3) All of Brazil’s infrastructure is decrepit. The World Economic Forum ranks it at 114th out of 148 countries. After a spate of railway-building at the turn of the 20th century, and road- and dam-building 50 years later, little was added or even maintained. In the 1980s infrastructure was a casualty of slowing growth and spiralling inflation. Unable to find jobs, engineers emigrated or retrained. Government stopped planning for the long term. According to Contas Abertas, a public-spending watchdog, only a fifth of federal money budgeted for urban transport in the past decade was actually spent. Just 1.5% of Brazil’s GDP goes on infrastructure investment from all sources, both public and private. The long-run global average is 3.8%. The McKinsey Global Institute estimates the total value of Brazil’s infrastructure at 16% of GDP. Other big economies average 71%. To catch up, Brazil would have to triple its annual infrastructure spending for the next 20 years.

(4) Moreover, it may be getting poor value from what little it does invest because so much goes on the wrong things. A cumbersome environmental-licensing process pushes up costs and causes delays. Expensive studies are required before construction on big projects can start and then again at various stages along the way and at the end. Farmers and manufacturers spend heavily on lorries because road transport is their only option. But that is working around the problem, not solving it.

(5) In the 1990s Mr Cardoso’s government privatised state-owned oil, energy and telecoms firms. It allowed private operators to lease terminals in public ports and to build their own new ports. Imports were booming as the economy opened up, so container terminals were a priority. The one at the public port in Bahia’s capital, Salvador, is an example of the transformation wrought by private money and management. Its customers used to rate it Brazil’s worst port, with a draft too shallow for big ships and a quay so short that even smaller vessels had to unload a bit at a time. But in the past decade its operator, Wilson & Sons, spent 260m reais on replacing equipment, lengthening the quay and deepening the draft. Capacity has doubled. Land access will improve, too, once an almost finished expressway opens. Paranaguá is spending 400m reais from its own revenues on replacing outdated equipment, but without private money it cannot expand enough to end the queues to dock. It has drawn up detailed plans to build a new terminal and two new quays, and identified 20 dockside areas that could be leased to new operators, which would bring in 1.6 billion reais of private investment. All that is missing is the federal government’s permission. It hopes to get it next year, but there is no guarantee.

(6) Firms that want to build their own infrastructure, such as mining companies, which need dedicated railways and ports, can generally build at will in Brazil, though they still face the hassle of environmental licensing. If the government wants to hand a project to the private sector it will hold an auction, granting the concession to the highest bidder, or sometimes the applicant who promises the lowest user charges. But since Lula came to power in 2003 there have been few infrastructure auctions of any kind. In recent years, under heavy lobbying from public ports, the ports regulator stopped granting operating licences to private ports except those intended mainly for the owners’ own cargo. As a result, during a decade in which Brazil became a commodity-exporting powerhouse, its bulk-cargo terminals hardly expanded at all.

(7) At first Lula’s government planned to upgrade Brazil’s infrastructure without private help. In 2007 the president announced a collection of long-mooted public construction projects, the Growth Acceleration Programme (PAC). Many were intended to give farming and mining regions access to alternative ports. But the results have been disappointing. Two-thirds of the biggest projects are late and over budget. The trans-north-eastern railway is only half-built and its cost has doubled. The route of the east-west integration railway, which would cross Bahia, has still not been settled. The northern stretch of the BR-163, a trunk road built in the 1970s, was waiting so long to be paved that locals started calling it the “endless road”. Most of it is still waiting.

(8) What has got things moving is the prospect of disgrace during the forthcoming big sporting events. Brazil’s terrible airports will be the first thing most foreign football fans see when they arrive for next year’s World Cup. Infraero, the state-owned company that runs them, was meant to be getting them ready for the extra traffic, but it is a byword for incompetence. Between 2007 and 2010 it managed to spend just 800m of the 3 billion reais it was supposed to invest. In desperation, the government last year leased three of the biggest airports to private operators.

(9) That seemed to break a bigger logjam. First more airport auctions were mooted; then, some months later, Ms Rousseff announced that 7,500km of toll roads and 10,000km of railways were to be auctioned too. Earlier this year she picked the biggest fight of her presidency, pushing a ports bill through Congress against lobbying from powerful vested interests. The new law enables private ports once again to handle third-party cargo and allows them to hire their own staff, rather than having to use casual labour from the dockworkers’ unions that have a monopoly in public ports. Ms Rousseff also promised to auction some entirely new projects and to re-tender around 150 contracts in public terminals whose concessions had expired.

(10) Would-be investors in port projects are hanging back because of the high chances of cost overruns and long delays. Two newly built private terminals at Santos that together cost more than 4 billion reais illustrate the risks. Both took years to get off the ground and years more to build. Both were finished earlier this year but remained idle for months. Brasil Terminal Portuário, a private terminal within the public port, is still waiting for the government to dredge its access channel. At Embraport, which is outside the public-port area, union members from Santos blocked road access and boarded any ships that tried to dock. Rather than enforcing the law that allows such terminals to use their own workers, the government summoned the management to Brasília for some arm-twisting. In August Embraport agreed to take the union members “on a trial basis”.

(11) Given such regulatory and execution risks, there are unlikely to be many takers for either rail or port projects as currently conceived, says Bruno Savaris, an infrastructure analyst at Credit Suisse. He predicts that at most a third of the planned investments will be auctioned in the next three years: airports, a few simple port projects and the best toll roads. That is far short of what Brazil needs. The good news, says Mr Savaris, is that the government is at last beginning to understand that it must either reduce the risks for private investors or raise their returns. Private know-how and money will be vital to get Brazil moving again.

(www.economist.com/news/special-report. Adapted)

Read the article and answer the question

The road to hell

(1) Bringing crops from one of the futuristic new farms in Brazil’s central and northern plains to foreign markets means taking a journey back in time. Loaded onto lorries, most are driven almost 2,000km south on narrow, potholed roads to the ports of Santos and Paranaguá. In the 19th and early 20th centuries they were used to bring in immigrants and ship out the coffee grown in the fertile states of São Paulo and Paraná, but now they are overwhelmed. Thanks to a record harvest this year, Brazil became the world’s largest soya producer, overtaking the United States. The queue of lorries waiting to enter Santos sometimes stretched to 40km.

(2) No part of that journey makes sense. Brazil has too few crop silos, so lorries are used for storage as well as transport, causing a crush at ports after harvest. Produce from so far north should probably not be travelling to southern ports at all. Freight by road costs twice as much as by rail and four times as much as by water. Brazilian farmers pay 25% or more of the value of their soya to bring it to port; their competitors in Iowa just 9%. The bottleneck at ports pushes costs higher still. It also puts off customers. In March Sunrise Group, China’s biggest soya trader, cancelled an order for 2m tonnes of Brazilian soya after repeated delays.

(3) All of Brazil’s infrastructure is decrepit. The World Economic Forum ranks it at 114th out of 148 countries. After a spate of railway-building at the turn of the 20th century, and road- and dam-building 50 years later, little was added or even maintained. In the 1980s infrastructure was a casualty of slowing growth and spiralling inflation. Unable to find jobs, engineers emigrated or retrained. Government stopped planning for the long term. According to Contas Abertas, a public-spending watchdog, only a fifth of federal money budgeted for urban transport in the past decade was actually spent. Just 1.5% of Brazil’s GDP goes on infrastructure investment from all sources, both public and private. The long-run global average is 3.8%. The McKinsey Global Institute estimates the total value of Brazil’s infrastructure at 16% of GDP. Other big economies average 71%. To catch up, Brazil would have to triple its annual infrastructure spending for the next 20 years.

(4) Moreover, it may be getting poor value from what little it does invest because so much goes on the wrong things. A cumbersome environmental-licensing process pushes up costs and causes delays. Expensive studies are required before construction on big projects can start and then again at various stages along the way and at the end. Farmers and manufacturers spend heavily on lorries because road transport is their only option. But that is working around the problem, not solving it.

(5) In the 1990s Mr Cardoso’s government privatised state-owned oil, energy and telecoms firms. It allowed private operators to lease terminals in public ports and to build their own new ports. Imports were booming as the economy opened up, so container terminals were a priority. The one at the public port in Bahia’s capital, Salvador, is an example of the transformation wrought by private money and management. Its customers used to rate it Brazil’s worst port, with a draft too shallow for big ships and a quay so short that even smaller vessels had to unload a bit at a time. But in the past decade its operator, Wilson & Sons, spent 260m reais on replacing equipment, lengthening the quay and deepening the draft. Capacity has doubled. Land access will improve, too, once an almost finished expressway opens. Paranaguá is spending 400m reais from its own revenues on replacing outdated equipment, but without private money it cannot expand enough to end the queues to dock. It has drawn up detailed plans to build a new terminal and two new quays, and identified 20 dockside areas that could be leased to new operators, which would bring in 1.6 billion reais of private investment. All that is missing is the federal government’s permission. It hopes to get it next year, but there is no guarantee.

(6) Firms that want to build their own infrastructure, such as mining companies, which need dedicated railways and ports, can generally build at will in Brazil, though they still face the hassle of environmental licensing. If the government wants to hand a project to the private sector it will hold an auction, granting the concession to the highest bidder, or sometimes the applicant who promises the lowest user charges. But since Lula came to power in 2003 there have been few infrastructure auctions of any kind. In recent years, under heavy lobbying from public ports, the ports regulator stopped granting operating licences to private ports except those intended mainly for the owners’ own cargo. As a result, during a decade in which Brazil became a commodity-exporting powerhouse, its bulk-cargo terminals hardly expanded at all.

(7) At first Lula’s government planned to upgrade Brazil’s infrastructure without private help. In 2007 the president announced a collection of long-mooted public construction projects, the Growth Acceleration Programme (PAC). Many were intended to give farming and mining regions access to alternative ports. But the results have been disappointing. Two-thirds of the biggest projects are late and over budget. The trans-north-eastern railway is only half-built and its cost has doubled. The route of the east-west integration railway, which would cross Bahia, has still not been settled. The northern stretch of the BR-163, a trunk road built in the 1970s, was waiting so long to be paved that locals started calling it the “endless road”. Most of it is still waiting.

(8) What has got things moving is the prospect of disgrace during the forthcoming big sporting events. Brazil’s terrible airports will be the first thing most foreign football fans see when they arrive for next year’s World Cup. Infraero, the state-owned company that runs them, was meant to be getting them ready for the extra traffic, but it is a byword for incompetence. Between 2007 and 2010 it managed to spend just 800m of the 3 billion reais it was supposed to invest. In desperation, the government last year leased three of the biggest airports to private operators.

(9) That seemed to break a bigger logjam. First more airport auctions were mooted; then, some months later, Ms Rousseff announced that 7,500km of toll roads and 10,000km of railways were to be auctioned too. Earlier this year she picked the biggest fight of her presidency, pushing a ports bill through Congress against lobbying from powerful vested interests. The new law enables private ports once again to handle third-party cargo and allows them to hire their own staff, rather than having to use casual labour from the dockworkers’ unions that have a monopoly in public ports. Ms Rousseff also promised to auction some entirely new projects and to re-tender around 150 contracts in public terminals whose concessions had expired.

(10) Would-be investors in port projects are hanging back because of the high chances of cost overruns and long delays. Two newly built private terminals at Santos that together cost more than 4 billion reais illustrate the risks. Both took years to get off the ground and years more to build. Both were finished earlier this year but remained idle for months. Brasil Terminal Portuário, a private terminal within the public port, is still waiting for the government to dredge its access channel. At Embraport, which is outside the public-port area, union members from Santos blocked road access and boarded any ships that tried to dock. Rather than enforcing the law that allows such terminals to use their own workers, the government summoned the management to Brasília for some arm-twisting. In August Embraport agreed to take the union members “on a trial basis”.

(11) Given such regulatory and execution risks, there are unlikely to be many takers for either rail or port projects as currently conceived, says Bruno Savaris, an infrastructure analyst at Credit Suisse. He predicts that at most a third of the planned investments will be auctioned in the next three years: airports, a few simple port projects and the best toll roads. That is far short of what Brazil needs. The good news, says Mr Savaris, is that the government is at last beginning to understand that it must either reduce the risks for private investors or raise their returns. Private know-how and money will be vital to get Brazil moving again.

(www.economist.com/news/special-report. Adapted)

Read the article and answer the question

The road to hell

(1) Bringing crops from one of the futuristic new farms in Brazil’s central and northern plains to foreign markets means taking a journey back in time. Loaded onto lorries, most are driven almost 2,000km south on narrow, potholed roads to the ports of Santos and Paranaguá. In the 19th and early 20th centuries they were used to bring in immigrants and ship out the coffee grown in the fertile states of São Paulo and Paraná, but now they are overwhelmed. Thanks to a record harvest this year, Brazil became the world’s largest soya producer, overtaking the United States. The queue of lorries waiting to enter Santos sometimes stretched to 40km.

(2) No part of that journey makes sense. Brazil has too few crop silos, so lorries are used for storage as well as transport, causing a crush at ports after harvest. Produce from so far north should probably not be travelling to southern ports at all. Freight by road costs twice as much as by rail and four times as much as by water. Brazilian farmers pay 25% or more of the value of their soya to bring it to port; their competitors in Iowa just 9%. The bottleneck at ports pushes costs higher still. It also puts off customers. In March Sunrise Group, China’s biggest soya trader, cancelled an order for 2m tonnes of Brazilian soya after repeated delays.

(3) All of Brazil’s infrastructure is decrepit. The World Economic Forum ranks it at 114th out of 148 countries. After a spate of railway-building at the turn of the 20th century, and road- and dam-building 50 years later, little was added or even maintained. In the 1980s infrastructure was a casualty of slowing growth and spiralling inflation. Unable to find jobs, engineers emigrated or retrained. Government stopped planning for the long term. According to Contas Abertas, a public-spending watchdog, only a fifth of federal money budgeted for urban transport in the past decade was actually spent. Just 1.5% of Brazil’s GDP goes on infrastructure investment from all sources, both public and private. The long-run global average is 3.8%. The McKinsey Global Institute estimates the total value of Brazil’s infrastructure at 16% of GDP. Other big economies average 71%. To catch up, Brazil would have to triple its annual infrastructure spending for the next 20 years.

(4) Moreover, it may be getting poor value from what little it does invest because so much goes on the wrong things. A cumbersome environmental-licensing process pushes up costs and causes delays. Expensive studies are required before construction on big projects can start and then again at various stages along the way and at the end. Farmers and manufacturers spend heavily on lorries because road transport is their only option. But that is working around the problem, not solving it.

(5) In the 1990s Mr Cardoso’s government privatised state-owned oil, energy and telecoms firms. It allowed private operators to lease terminals in public ports and to build their own new ports. Imports were booming as the economy opened up, so container terminals were a priority. The one at the public port in Bahia’s capital, Salvador, is an example of the transformation wrought by private money and management. Its customers used to rate it Brazil’s worst port, with a draft too shallow for big ships and a quay so short that even smaller vessels had to unload a bit at a time. But in the past decade its operator, Wilson & Sons, spent 260m reais on replacing equipment, lengthening the quay and deepening the draft. Capacity has doubled. Land access will improve, too, once an almost finished expressway opens. Paranaguá is spending 400m reais from its own revenues on replacing outdated equipment, but without private money it cannot expand enough to end the queues to dock. It has drawn up detailed plans to build a new terminal and two new quays, and identified 20 dockside areas that could be leased to new operators, which would bring in 1.6 billion reais of private investment. All that is missing is the federal government’s permission. It hopes to get it next year, but there is no guarantee.

(6) Firms that want to build their own infrastructure, such as mining companies, which need dedicated railways and ports, can generally build at will in Brazil, though they still face the hassle of environmental licensing. If the government wants to hand a project to the private sector it will hold an auction, granting the concession to the highest bidder, or sometimes the applicant who promises the lowest user charges. But since Lula came to power in 2003 there have been few infrastructure auctions of any kind. In recent years, under heavy lobbying from public ports, the ports regulator stopped granting operating licences to private ports except those intended mainly for the owners’ own cargo. As a result, during a decade in which Brazil became a commodity-exporting powerhouse, its bulk-cargo terminals hardly expanded at all.

(7) At first Lula’s government planned to upgrade Brazil’s infrastructure without private help. In 2007 the president announced a collection of long-mooted public construction projects, the Growth Acceleration Programme (PAC). Many were intended to give farming and mining regions access to alternative ports. But the results have been disappointing. Two-thirds of the biggest projects are late and over budget. The trans-north-eastern railway is only half-built and its cost has doubled. The route of the east-west integration railway, which would cross Bahia, has still not been settled. The northern stretch of the BR-163, a trunk road built in the 1970s, was waiting so long to be paved that locals started calling it the “endless road”. Most of it is still waiting.

(8) What has got things moving is the prospect of disgrace during the forthcoming big sporting events. Brazil’s terrible airports will be the first thing most foreign football fans see when they arrive for next year’s World Cup. Infraero, the state-owned company that runs them, was meant to be getting them ready for the extra traffic, but it is a byword for incompetence. Between 2007 and 2010 it managed to spend just 800m of the 3 billion reais it was supposed to invest. In desperation, the government last year leased three of the biggest airports to private operators.

(9) That seemed to break a bigger logjam. First more airport auctions were mooted; then, some months later, Ms Rousseff announced that 7,500km of toll roads and 10,000km of railways were to be auctioned too. Earlier this year she picked the biggest fight of her presidency, pushing a ports bill through Congress against lobbying from powerful vested interests. The new law enables private ports once again to handle third-party cargo and allows them to hire their own staff, rather than having to use casual labour from the dockworkers’ unions that have a monopoly in public ports. Ms Rousseff also promised to auction some entirely new projects and to re-tender around 150 contracts in public terminals whose concessions had expired.

(10) Would-be investors in port projects are hanging back because of the high chances of cost overruns and long delays. Two newly built private terminals at Santos that together cost more than 4 billion reais illustrate the risks. Both took years to get off the ground and years more to build. Both were finished earlier this year but remained idle for months. Brasil Terminal Portuário, a private terminal within the public port, is still waiting for the government to dredge its access channel. At Embraport, which is outside the public-port area, union members from Santos blocked road access and boarded any ships that tried to dock. Rather than enforcing the law that allows such terminals to use their own workers, the government summoned the management to Brasília for some arm-twisting. In August Embraport agreed to take the union members “on a trial basis”.

(11) Given such regulatory and execution risks, there are unlikely to be many takers for either rail or port projects as currently conceived, says Bruno Savaris, an infrastructure analyst at Credit Suisse. He predicts that at most a third of the planned investments will be auctioned in the next three years: airports, a few simple port projects and the best toll roads. That is far short of what Brazil needs. The good news, says Mr Savaris, is that the government is at last beginning to understand that it must either reduce the risks for private investors or raise their returns. Private know-how and money will be vital to get Brazil moving again.

(www.economist.com/news/special-report. Adapted)

Read the article and answer the question

The road to hell

(1) Bringing crops from one of the futuristic new farms in Brazil’s central and northern plains to foreign markets means taking a journey back in time. Loaded onto lorries, most are driven almost 2,000km south on narrow, potholed roads to the ports of Santos and Paranaguá. In the 19th and early 20th centuries they were used to bring in immigrants and ship out the coffee grown in the fertile states of São Paulo and Paraná, but now they are overwhelmed. Thanks to a record harvest this year, Brazil became the world’s largest soya producer, overtaking the United States. The queue of lorries waiting to enter Santos sometimes stretched to 40km.

(2) No part of that journey makes sense. Brazil has too few crop silos, so lorries are used for storage as well as transport, causing a crush at ports after harvest. Produce from so far north should probably not be travelling to southern ports at all. Freight by road costs twice as much as by rail and four times as much as by water. Brazilian farmers pay 25% or more of the value of their soya to bring it to port; their competitors in Iowa just 9%. The bottleneck at ports pushes costs higher still. It also puts off customers. In March Sunrise Group, China’s biggest soya trader, cancelled an order for 2m tonnes of Brazilian soya after repeated delays.

(3) All of Brazil’s infrastructure is decrepit. The World Economic Forum ranks it at 114th out of 148 countries. After a spate of railway-building at the turn of the 20th century, and road- and dam-building 50 years later, little was added or even maintained. In the 1980s infrastructure was a casualty of slowing growth and spiralling inflation. Unable to find jobs, engineers emigrated or retrained. Government stopped planning for the long term. According to Contas Abertas, a public-spending watchdog, only a fifth of federal money budgeted for urban transport in the past decade was actually spent. Just 1.5% of Brazil’s GDP goes on infrastructure investment from all sources, both public and private. The long-run global average is 3.8%. The McKinsey Global Institute estimates the total value of Brazil’s infrastructure at 16% of GDP. Other big economies average 71%. To catch up, Brazil would have to triple its annual infrastructure spending for the next 20 years.

(4) Moreover, it may be getting poor value from what little it does invest because so much goes on the wrong things. A cumbersome environmental-licensing process pushes up costs and causes delays. Expensive studies are required before construction on big projects can start and then again at various stages along the way and at the end. Farmers and manufacturers spend heavily on lorries because road transport is their only option. But that is working around the problem, not solving it.

(5) In the 1990s Mr Cardoso’s government privatised state-owned oil, energy and telecoms firms. It allowed private operators to lease terminals in public ports and to build their own new ports. Imports were booming as the economy opened up, so container terminals were a priority. The one at the public port in Bahia’s capital, Salvador, is an example of the transformation wrought by private money and management. Its customers used to rate it Brazil’s worst port, with a draft too shallow for big ships and a quay so short that even smaller vessels had to unload a bit at a time. But in the past decade its operator, Wilson & Sons, spent 260m reais on replacing equipment, lengthening the quay and deepening the draft. Capacity has doubled. Land access will improve, too, once an almost finished expressway opens. Paranaguá is spending 400m reais from its own revenues on replacing outdated equipment, but without private money it cannot expand enough to end the queues to dock. It has drawn up detailed plans to build a new terminal and two new quays, and identified 20 dockside areas that could be leased to new operators, which would bring in 1.6 billion reais of private investment. All that is missing is the federal government’s permission. It hopes to get it next year, but there is no guarantee.

(6) Firms that want to build their own infrastructure, such as mining companies, which need dedicated railways and ports, can generally build at will in Brazil, though they still face the hassle of environmental licensing. If the government wants to hand a project to the private sector it will hold an auction, granting the concession to the highest bidder, or sometimes the applicant who promises the lowest user charges. But since Lula came to power in 2003 there have been few infrastructure auctions of any kind. In recent years, under heavy lobbying from public ports, the ports regulator stopped granting operating licences to private ports except those intended mainly for the owners’ own cargo. As a result, during a decade in which Brazil became a commodity-exporting powerhouse, its bulk-cargo terminals hardly expanded at all.

(7) At first Lula’s government planned to upgrade Brazil’s infrastructure without private help. In 2007 the president announced a collection of long-mooted public construction projects, the Growth Acceleration Programme (PAC). Many were intended to give farming and mining regions access to alternative ports. But the results have been disappointing. Two-thirds of the biggest projects are late and over budget. The trans-north-eastern railway is only half-built and its cost has doubled. The route of the east-west integration railway, which would cross Bahia, has still not been settled. The northern stretch of the BR-163, a trunk road built in the 1970s, was waiting so long to be paved that locals started calling it the “endless road”. Most of it is still waiting.

(8) What has got things moving is the prospect of disgrace during the forthcoming big sporting events. Brazil’s terrible airports will be the first thing most foreign football fans see when they arrive for next year’s World Cup. Infraero, the state-owned company that runs them, was meant to be getting them ready for the extra traffic, but it is a byword for incompetence. Between 2007 and 2010 it managed to spend just 800m of the 3 billion reais it was supposed to invest. In desperation, the government last year leased three of the biggest airports to private operators.

(9) That seemed to break a bigger logjam. First more airport auctions were mooted; then, some months later, Ms Rousseff announced that 7,500km of toll roads and 10,000km of railways were to be auctioned too. Earlier this year she picked the biggest fight of her presidency, pushing a ports bill through Congress against lobbying from powerful vested interests. The new law enables private ports once again to handle third-party cargo and allows them to hire their own staff, rather than having to use casual labour from the dockworkers’ unions that have a monopoly in public ports. Ms Rousseff also promised to auction some entirely new projects and to re-tender around 150 contracts in public terminals whose concessions had expired.

(10) Would-be investors in port projects are hanging back because of the high chances of cost overruns and long delays. Two newly built private terminals at Santos that together cost more than 4 billion reais illustrate the risks. Both took years to get off the ground and years more to build. Both were finished earlier this year but remained idle for months. Brasil Terminal Portuário, a private terminal within the public port, is still waiting for the government to dredge its access channel. At Embraport, which is outside the public-port area, union members from Santos blocked road access and boarded any ships that tried to dock. Rather than enforcing the law that allows such terminals to use their own workers, the government summoned the management to Brasília for some arm-twisting. In August Embraport agreed to take the union members “on a trial basis”.

(11) Given such regulatory and execution risks, there are unlikely to be many takers for either rail or port projects as currently conceived, says Bruno Savaris, an infrastructure analyst at Credit Suisse. He predicts that at most a third of the planned investments will be auctioned in the next three years: airports, a few simple port projects and the best toll roads. That is far short of what Brazil needs. The good news, says Mr Savaris, is that the government is at last beginning to understand that it must either reduce the risks for private investors or raise their returns. Private know-how and money will be vital to get Brazil moving again.

(www.economist.com/news/special-report. Adapted)

Read the article and answer the question

The road to hell

(1) Bringing crops from one of the futuristic new farms in Brazil’s central and northern plains to foreign markets means taking a journey back in time. Loaded onto lorries, most are driven almost 2,000km south on narrow, potholed roads to the ports of Santos and Paranaguá. In the 19th and early 20th centuries they were used to bring in immigrants and ship out the coffee grown in the fertile states of São Paulo and Paraná, but now they are overwhelmed. Thanks to a record harvest this year, Brazil became the world’s largest soya producer, overtaking the United States. The queue of lorries waiting to enter Santos sometimes stretched to 40km.

(2) No part of that journey makes sense. Brazil has too few crop silos, so lorries are used for storage as well as transport, causing a crush at ports after harvest. Produce from so far north should probably not be travelling to southern ports at all. Freight by road costs twice as much as by rail and four times as much as by water. Brazilian farmers pay 25% or more of the value of their soya to bring it to port; their competitors in Iowa just 9%. The bottleneck at ports pushes costs higher still. It also puts off customers. In March Sunrise Group, China’s biggest soya trader, cancelled an order for 2m tonnes of Brazilian soya after repeated delays.

(3) All of Brazil’s infrastructure is decrepit. The World Economic Forum ranks it at 114th out of 148 countries. After a spate of railway-building at the turn of the 20th century, and road- and dam-building 50 years later, little was added or even maintained. In the 1980s infrastructure was a casualty of slowing growth and spiralling inflation. Unable to find jobs, engineers emigrated or retrained. Government stopped planning for the long term. According to Contas Abertas, a public-spending watchdog, only a fifth of federal money budgeted for urban transport in the past decade was actually spent. Just 1.5% of Brazil’s GDP goes on infrastructure investment from all sources, both public and private. The long-run global average is 3.8%. The McKinsey Global Institute estimates the total value of Brazil’s infrastructure at 16% of GDP. Other big economies average 71%. To catch up, Brazil would have to triple its annual infrastructure spending for the next 20 years.

(4) Moreover, it may be getting poor value from what little it does invest because so much goes on the wrong things. A cumbersome environmental-licensing process pushes up costs and causes delays. Expensive studies are required before construction on big projects can start and then again at various stages along the way and at the end. Farmers and manufacturers spend heavily on lorries because road transport is their only option. But that is working around the problem, not solving it.

(5) In the 1990s Mr Cardoso’s government privatised state-owned oil, energy and telecoms firms. It allowed private operators to lease terminals in public ports and to build their own new ports. Imports were booming as the economy opened up, so container terminals were a priority. The one at the public port in Bahia’s capital, Salvador, is an example of the transformation wrought by private money and management. Its customers used to rate it Brazil’s worst port, with a draft too shallow for big ships and a quay so short that even smaller vessels had to unload a bit at a time. But in the past decade its operator, Wilson & Sons, spent 260m reais on replacing equipment, lengthening the quay and deepening the draft. Capacity has doubled. Land access will improve, too, once an almost finished expressway opens. Paranaguá is spending 400m reais from its own revenues on replacing outdated equipment, but without private money it cannot expand enough to end the queues to dock. It has drawn up detailed plans to build a new terminal and two new quays, and identified 20 dockside areas that could be leased to new operators, which would bring in 1.6 billion reais of private investment. All that is missing is the federal government’s permission. It hopes to get it next year, but there is no guarantee.

(6) Firms that want to build their own infrastructure, such as mining companies, which need dedicated railways and ports, can generally build at will in Brazil, though they still face the hassle of environmental licensing. If the government wants to hand a project to the private sector it will hold an auction, granting the concession to the highest bidder, or sometimes the applicant who promises the lowest user charges. But since Lula came to power in 2003 there have been few infrastructure auctions of any kind. In recent years, under heavy lobbying from public ports, the ports regulator stopped granting operating licences to private ports except those intended mainly for the owners’ own cargo. As a result, during a decade in which Brazil became a commodity-exporting powerhouse, its bulk-cargo terminals hardly expanded at all.

(7) At first Lula’s government planned to upgrade Brazil’s infrastructure without private help. In 2007 the president announced a collection of long-mooted public construction projects, the Growth Acceleration Programme (PAC). Many were intended to give farming and mining regions access to alternative ports. But the results have been disappointing. Two-thirds of the biggest projects are late and over budget. The trans-north-eastern railway is only half-built and its cost has doubled. The route of the east-west integration railway, which would cross Bahia, has still not been settled. The northern stretch of the BR-163, a trunk road built in the 1970s, was waiting so long to be paved that locals started calling it the “endless road”. Most of it is still waiting.

(8) What has got things moving is the prospect of disgrace during the forthcoming big sporting events. Brazil’s terrible airports will be the first thing most foreign football fans see when they arrive for next year’s World Cup. Infraero, the state-owned company that runs them, was meant to be getting them ready for the extra traffic, but it is a byword for incompetence. Between 2007 and 2010 it managed to spend just 800m of the 3 billion reais it was supposed to invest. In desperation, the government last year leased three of the biggest airports to private operators.

(9) That seemed to break a bigger logjam. First more airport auctions were mooted; then, some months later, Ms Rousseff announced that 7,500km of toll roads and 10,000km of railways were to be auctioned too. Earlier this year she picked the biggest fight of her presidency, pushing a ports bill through Congress against lobbying from powerful vested interests. The new law enables private ports once again to handle third-party cargo and allows them to hire their own staff, rather than having to use casual labour from the dockworkers’ unions that have a monopoly in public ports. Ms Rousseff also promised to auction some entirely new projects and to re-tender around 150 contracts in public terminals whose concessions had expired.

(10) Would-be investors in port projects are hanging back because of the high chances of cost overruns and long delays. Two newly built private terminals at Santos that together cost more than 4 billion reais illustrate the risks. Both took years to get off the ground and years more to build. Both were finished earlier this year but remained idle for months. Brasil Terminal Portuário, a private terminal within the public port, is still waiting for the government to dredge its access channel. At Embraport, which is outside the public-port area, union members from Santos blocked road access and boarded any ships that tried to dock. Rather than enforcing the law that allows such terminals to use their own workers, the government summoned the management to Brasília for some arm-twisting. In August Embraport agreed to take the union members “on a trial basis”.

(11) Given such regulatory and execution risks, there are unlikely to be many takers for either rail or port projects as currently conceived, says Bruno Savaris, an infrastructure analyst at Credit Suisse. He predicts that at most a third of the planned investments will be auctioned in the next three years: airports, a few simple port projects and the best toll roads. That is far short of what Brazil needs. The good news, says Mr Savaris, is that the government is at last beginning to understand that it must either reduce the risks for private investors or raise their returns. Private know-how and money will be vital to get Brazil moving again.

(www.economist.com/news/special-report. Adapted)

Read the article and answer the question

The road to hell

(1) Bringing crops from one of the futuristic new farms in Brazil’s central and northern plains to foreign markets means taking a journey back in time. Loaded onto lorries, most are driven almost 2,000km south on narrow, potholed roads to the ports of Santos and Paranaguá. In the 19th and early 20th centuries they were used to bring in immigrants and ship out the coffee grown in the fertile states of São Paulo and Paraná, but now they are overwhelmed. Thanks to a record harvest this year, Brazil became the world’s largest soya producer, overtaking the United States. The queue of lorries waiting to enter Santos sometimes stretched to 40km.

(2) No part of that journey makes sense. Brazil has too few crop silos, so lorries are used for storage as well as transport, causing a crush at ports after harvest. Produce from so far north should probably not be travelling to southern ports at all. Freight by road costs twice as much as by rail and four times as much as by water. Brazilian farmers pay 25% or more of the value of their soya to bring it to port; their competitors in Iowa just 9%. The bottleneck at ports pushes costs higher still. It also puts off customers. In March Sunrise Group, China’s biggest soya trader, cancelled an order for 2m tonnes of Brazilian soya after repeated delays.

(3) All of Brazil’s infrastructure is decrepit. The World Economic Forum ranks it at 114th out of 148 countries. After a spate of railway-building at the turn of the 20th century, and road- and dam-building 50 years later, little was added or even maintained. In the 1980s infrastructure was a casualty of slowing growth and spiralling inflation. Unable to find jobs, engineers emigrated or retrained. Government stopped planning for the long term. According to Contas Abertas, a public-spending watchdog, only a fifth of federal money budgeted for urban transport in the past decade was actually spent. Just 1.5% of Brazil’s GDP goes on infrastructure investment from all sources, both public and private. The long-run global average is 3.8%. The McKinsey Global Institute estimates the total value of Brazil’s infrastructure at 16% of GDP. Other big economies average 71%. To catch up, Brazil would have to triple its annual infrastructure spending for the next 20 years.

(4) Moreover, it may be getting poor value from what little it does invest because so much goes on the wrong things. A cumbersome environmental-licensing process pushes up costs and causes delays. Expensive studies are required before construction on big projects can start and then again at various stages along the way and at the end. Farmers and manufacturers spend heavily on lorries because road transport is their only option. But that is working around the problem, not solving it.

(5) In the 1990s Mr Cardoso’s government privatised state-owned oil, energy and telecoms firms. It allowed private operators to lease terminals in public ports and to build their own new ports. Imports were booming as the economy opened up, so container terminals were a priority. The one at the public port in Bahia’s capital, Salvador, is an example of the transformation wrought by private money and management. Its customers used to rate it Brazil’s worst port, with a draft too shallow for big ships and a quay so short that even smaller vessels had to unload a bit at a time. But in the past decade its operator, Wilson & Sons, spent 260m reais on replacing equipment, lengthening the quay and deepening the draft. Capacity has doubled. Land access will improve, too, once an almost finished expressway opens. Paranaguá is spending 400m reais from its own revenues on replacing outdated equipment, but without private money it cannot expand enough to end the queues to dock. It has drawn up detailed plans to build a new terminal and two new quays, and identified 20 dockside areas that could be leased to new operators, which would bring in 1.6 billion reais of private investment. All that is missing is the federal government’s permission. It hopes to get it next year, but there is no guarantee.

(6) Firms that want to build their own infrastructure, such as mining companies, which need dedicated railways and ports, can generally build at will in Brazil, though they still face the hassle of environmental licensing. If the government wants to hand a project to the private sector it will hold an auction, granting the concession to the highest bidder, or sometimes the applicant who promises the lowest user charges. But since Lula came to power in 2003 there have been few infrastructure auctions of any kind. In recent years, under heavy lobbying from public ports, the ports regulator stopped granting operating licences to private ports except those intended mainly for the owners’ own cargo. As a result, during a decade in which Brazil became a commodity-exporting powerhouse, its bulk-cargo terminals hardly expanded at all.

(7) At first Lula’s government planned to upgrade Brazil’s infrastructure without private help. In 2007 the president announced a collection of long-mooted public construction projects, the Growth Acceleration Programme (PAC). Many were intended to give farming and mining regions access to alternative ports. But the results have been disappointing. Two-thirds of the biggest projects are late and over budget. The trans-north-eastern railway is only half-built and its cost has doubled. The route of the east-west integration railway, which would cross Bahia, has still not been settled. The northern stretch of the BR-163, a trunk road built in the 1970s, was waiting so long to be paved that locals started calling it the “endless road”. Most of it is still waiting.

(8) What has got things moving is the prospect of disgrace during the forthcoming big sporting events. Brazil’s terrible airports will be the first thing most foreign football fans see when they arrive for next year’s World Cup. Infraero, the state-owned company that runs them, was meant to be getting them ready for the extra traffic, but it is a byword for incompetence. Between 2007 and 2010 it managed to spend just 800m of the 3 billion reais it was supposed to invest. In desperation, the government last year leased three of the biggest airports to private operators.

(9) That seemed to break a bigger logjam. First more airport auctions were mooted; then, some months later, Ms Rousseff announced that 7,500km of toll roads and 10,000km of railways were to be auctioned too. Earlier this year she picked the biggest fight of her presidency, pushing a ports bill through Congress against lobbying from powerful vested interests. The new law enables private ports once again to handle third-party cargo and allows them to hire their own staff, rather than having to use casual labour from the dockworkers’ unions that have a monopoly in public ports. Ms Rousseff also promised to auction some entirely new projects and to re-tender around 150 contracts in public terminals whose concessions had expired.

(10) Would-be investors in port projects are hanging back because of the high chances of cost overruns and long delays. Two newly built private terminals at Santos that together cost more than 4 billion reais illustrate the risks. Both took years to get off the ground and years more to build. Both were finished earlier this year but remained idle for months. Brasil Terminal Portuário, a private terminal within the public port, is still waiting for the government to dredge its access channel. At Embraport, which is outside the public-port area, union members from Santos blocked road access and boarded any ships that tried to dock. Rather than enforcing the law that allows such terminals to use their own workers, the government summoned the management to Brasília for some arm-twisting. In August Embraport agreed to take the union members “on a trial basis”.

(11) Given such regulatory and execution risks, there are unlikely to be many takers for either rail or port projects as currently conceived, says Bruno Savaris, an infrastructure analyst at Credit Suisse. He predicts that at most a third of the planned investments will be auctioned in the next three years: airports, a few simple port projects and the best toll roads. That is far short of what Brazil needs. The good news, says Mr Savaris, is that the government is at last beginning to understand that it must either reduce the risks for private investors or raise their returns. Private know-how and money will be vital to get Brazil moving again.

(www.economist.com/news/special-report. Adapted)

Read the article and answer the question

The road to hell

(1) Bringing crops from one of the futuristic new farms in Brazil’s central and northern plains to foreign markets means taking a journey back in time. Loaded onto lorries, most are driven almost 2,000km south on narrow, potholed roads to the ports of Santos and Paranaguá. In the 19th and early 20th centuries they were used to bring in immigrants and ship out the coffee grown in the fertile states of São Paulo and Paraná, but now they are overwhelmed. Thanks to a record harvest this year, Brazil became the world’s largest soya producer, overtaking the United States. The queue of lorries waiting to enter Santos sometimes stretched to 40km.

(2) No part of that journey makes sense. Brazil has too few crop silos, so lorries are used for storage as well as transport, causing a crush at ports after harvest. Produce from so far north should probably not be travelling to southern ports at all. Freight by road costs twice as much as by rail and four times as much as by water. Brazilian farmers pay 25% or more of the value of their soya to bring it to port; their competitors in Iowa just 9%. The bottleneck at ports pushes costs higher still. It also puts off customers. In March Sunrise Group, China’s biggest soya trader, cancelled an order for 2m tonnes of Brazilian soya after repeated delays.

(3) All of Brazil’s infrastructure is decrepit. The World Economic Forum ranks it at 114th out of 148 countries. After a spate of railway-building at the turn of the 20th century, and road- and dam-building 50 years later, little was added or even maintained. In the 1980s infrastructure was a casualty of slowing growth and spiralling inflation. Unable to find jobs, engineers emigrated or retrained. Government stopped planning for the long term. According to Contas Abertas, a public-spending watchdog, only a fifth of federal money budgeted for urban transport in the past decade was actually spent. Just 1.5% of Brazil’s GDP goes on infrastructure investment from all sources, both public and private. The long-run global average is 3.8%. The McKinsey Global Institute estimates the total value of Brazil’s infrastructure at 16% of GDP. Other big economies average 71%. To catch up, Brazil would have to triple its annual infrastructure spending for the next 20 years.

(4) Moreover, it may be getting poor value from what little it does invest because so much goes on the wrong things. A cumbersome environmental-licensing process pushes up costs and causes delays. Expensive studies are required before construction on big projects can start and then again at various stages along the way and at the end. Farmers and manufacturers spend heavily on lorries because road transport is their only option. But that is working around the problem, not solving it.

(5) In the 1990s Mr Cardoso’s government privatised state-owned oil, energy and telecoms firms. It allowed private operators to lease terminals in public ports and to build their own new ports. Imports were booming as the economy opened up, so container terminals were a priority. The one at the public port in Bahia’s capital, Salvador, is an example of the transformation wrought by private money and management. Its customers used to rate it Brazil’s worst port, with a draft too shallow for big ships and a quay so short that even smaller vessels had to unload a bit at a time. But in the past decade its operator, Wilson & Sons, spent 260m reais on replacing equipment, lengthening the quay and deepening the draft. Capacity has doubled. Land access will improve, too, once an almost finished expressway opens. Paranaguá is spending 400m reais from its own revenues on replacing outdated equipment, but without private money it cannot expand enough to end the queues to dock. It has drawn up detailed plans to build a new terminal and two new quays, and identified 20 dockside areas that could be leased to new operators, which would bring in 1.6 billion reais of private investment. All that is missing is the federal government’s permission. It hopes to get it next year, but there is no guarantee.

(6) Firms that want to build their own infrastructure, such as mining companies, which need dedicated railways and ports, can generally build at will in Brazil, though they still face the hassle of environmental licensing. If the government wants to hand a project to the private sector it will hold an auction, granting the concession to the highest bidder, or sometimes the applicant who promises the lowest user charges. But since Lula came to power in 2003 there have been few infrastructure auctions of any kind. In recent years, under heavy lobbying from public ports, the ports regulator stopped granting operating licences to private ports except those intended mainly for the owners’ own cargo. As a result, during a decade in which Brazil became a commodity-exporting powerhouse, its bulk-cargo terminals hardly expanded at all.

(7) At first Lula’s government planned to upgrade Brazil’s infrastructure without private help. In 2007 the president announced a collection of long-mooted public construction projects, the Growth Acceleration Programme (PAC). Many were intended to give farming and mining regions access to alternative ports. But the results have been disappointing. Two-thirds of the biggest projects are late and over budget. The trans-north-eastern railway is only half-built and its cost has doubled. The route of the east-west integration railway, which would cross Bahia, has still not been settled. The northern stretch of the BR-163, a trunk road built in the 1970s, was waiting so long to be paved that locals started calling it the “endless road”. Most of it is still waiting.

(8) What has got things moving is the prospect of disgrace during the forthcoming big sporting events. Brazil’s terrible airports will be the first thing most foreign football fans see when they arrive for next year’s World Cup. Infraero, the state-owned company that runs them, was meant to be getting them ready for the extra traffic, but it is a byword for incompetence. Between 2007 and 2010 it managed to spend just 800m of the 3 billion reais it was supposed to invest. In desperation, the government last year leased three of the biggest airports to private operators.

(9) That seemed to break a bigger logjam. First more airport auctions were mooted; then, some months later, Ms Rousseff announced that 7,500km of toll roads and 10,000km of railways were to be auctioned too. Earlier this year she picked the biggest fight of her presidency, pushing a ports bill through Congress against lobbying from powerful vested interests. The new law enables private ports once again to handle third-party cargo and allows them to hire their own staff, rather than having to use casual labour from the dockworkers’ unions that have a monopoly in public ports. Ms Rousseff also promised to auction some entirely new projects and to re-tender around 150 contracts in public terminals whose concessions had expired.

(10) Would-be investors in port projects are hanging back because of the high chances of cost overruns and long delays. Two newly built private terminals at Santos that together cost more than 4 billion reais illustrate the risks. Both took years to get off the ground and years more to build. Both were finished earlier this year but remained idle for months. Brasil Terminal Portuário, a private terminal within the public port, is still waiting for the government to dredge its access channel. At Embraport, which is outside the public-port area, union members from Santos blocked road access and boarded any ships that tried to dock. Rather than enforcing the law that allows such terminals to use their own workers, the government summoned the management to Brasília for some arm-twisting. In August Embraport agreed to take the union members “on a trial basis”.

(11) Given such regulatory and execution risks, there are unlikely to be many takers for either rail or port projects as currently conceived, says Bruno Savaris, an infrastructure analyst at Credit Suisse. He predicts that at most a third of the planned investments will be auctioned in the next three years: airports, a few simple port projects and the best toll roads. That is far short of what Brazil needs. The good news, says Mr Savaris, is that the government is at last beginning to understand that it must either reduce the risks for private investors or raise their returns. Private know-how and money will be vital to get Brazil moving again.

(www.economist.com/news/special-report. Adapted)

Read the article and answer the question

The road to hell

(1) Bringing crops from one of the futuristic new farms in Brazil’s central and northern plains to foreign markets means taking a journey back in time. Loaded onto lorries, most are driven almost 2,000km south on narrow, potholed roads to the ports of Santos and Paranaguá. In the 19th and early 20th centuries they were used to bring in immigrants and ship out the coffee grown in the fertile states of São Paulo and Paraná, but now they are overwhelmed. Thanks to a record harvest this year, Brazil became the world’s largest soya producer, overtaking the United States. The queue of lorries waiting to enter Santos sometimes stretched to 40km.

(2) No part of that journey makes sense. Brazil has too few crop silos, so lorries are used for storage as well as transport, causing a crush at ports after harvest. Produce from so far north should probably not be travelling to southern ports at all. Freight by road costs twice as much as by rail and four times as much as by water. Brazilian farmers pay 25% or more of the value of their soya to bring it to port; their competitors in Iowa just 9%. The bottleneck at ports pushes costs higher still. It also puts off customers. In March Sunrise Group, China’s biggest soya trader, cancelled an order for 2m tonnes of Brazilian soya after repeated delays.

(3) All of Brazil’s infrastructure is decrepit. The World Economic Forum ranks it at 114th out of 148 countries. After a spate of railway-building at the turn of the 20th century, and road- and dam-building 50 years later, little was added or even maintained. In the 1980s infrastructure was a casualty of slowing growth and spiralling inflation. Unable to find jobs, engineers emigrated or retrained. Government stopped planning for the long term. According to Contas Abertas, a public-spending watchdog, only a fifth of federal money budgeted for urban transport in the past decade was actually spent. Just 1.5% of Brazil’s GDP goes on infrastructure investment from all sources, both public and private. The long-run global average is 3.8%. The McKinsey Global Institute estimates the total value of Brazil’s infrastructure at 16% of GDP. Other big economies average 71%. To catch up, Brazil would have to triple its annual infrastructure spending for the next 20 years.

(4) Moreover, it may be getting poor value from what little it does invest because so much goes on the wrong things. A cumbersome environmental-licensing process pushes up costs and causes delays. Expensive studies are required before construction on big projects can start and then again at various stages along the way and at the end. Farmers and manufacturers spend heavily on lorries because road transport is their only option. But that is working around the problem, not solving it.

(5) In the 1990s Mr Cardoso’s government privatised state-owned oil, energy and telecoms firms. It allowed private operators to lease terminals in public ports and to build their own new ports. Imports were booming as the economy opened up, so container terminals were a priority. The one at the public port in Bahia’s capital, Salvador, is an example of the transformation wrought by private money and management. Its customers used to rate it Brazil’s worst port, with a draft too shallow for big ships and a quay so short that even smaller vessels had to unload a bit at a time. But in the past decade its operator, Wilson & Sons, spent 260m reais on replacing equipment, lengthening the quay and deepening the draft. Capacity has doubled. Land access will improve, too, once an almost finished expressway opens. Paranaguá is spending 400m reais from its own revenues on replacing outdated equipment, but without private money it cannot expand enough to end the queues to dock. It has drawn up detailed plans to build a new terminal and two new quays, and identified 20 dockside areas that could be leased to new operators, which would bring in 1.6 billion reais of private investment. All that is missing is the federal government’s permission. It hopes to get it next year, but there is no guarantee.

(6) Firms that want to build their own infrastructure, such as mining companies, which need dedicated railways and ports, can generally build at will in Brazil, though they still face the hassle of environmental licensing. If the government wants to hand a project to the private sector it will hold an auction, granting the concession to the highest bidder, or sometimes the applicant who promises the lowest user charges. But since Lula came to power in 2003 there have been few infrastructure auctions of any kind. In recent years, under heavy lobbying from public ports, the ports regulator stopped granting operating licences to private ports except those intended mainly for the owners’ own cargo. As a result, during a decade in which Brazil became a commodity-exporting powerhouse, its bulk-cargo terminals hardly expanded at all.

(7) At first Lula’s government planned to upgrade Brazil’s infrastructure without private help. In 2007 the president announced a collection of long-mooted public construction projects, the Growth Acceleration Programme (PAC). Many were intended to give farming and mining regions access to alternative ports. But the results have been disappointing. Two-thirds of the biggest projects are late and over budget. The trans-north-eastern railway is only half-built and its cost has doubled. The route of the east-west integration railway, which would cross Bahia, has still not been settled. The northern stretch of the BR-163, a trunk road built in the 1970s, was waiting so long to be paved that locals started calling it the “endless road”. Most of it is still waiting.

(8) What has got things moving is the prospect of disgrace during the forthcoming big sporting events. Brazil’s terrible airports will be the first thing most foreign football fans see when they arrive for next year’s World Cup. Infraero, the state-owned company that runs them, was meant to be getting them ready for the extra traffic, but it is a byword for incompetence. Between 2007 and 2010 it managed to spend just 800m of the 3 billion reais it was supposed to invest. In desperation, the government last year leased three of the biggest airports to private operators.

(9) That seemed to break a bigger logjam. First more airport auctions were mooted; then, some months later, Ms Rousseff announced that 7,500km of toll roads and 10,000km of railways were to be auctioned too. Earlier this year she picked the biggest fight of her presidency, pushing a ports bill through Congress against lobbying from powerful vested interests. The new law enables private ports once again to handle third-party cargo and allows them to hire their own staff, rather than having to use casual labour from the dockworkers’ unions that have a monopoly in public ports. Ms Rousseff also promised to auction some entirely new projects and to re-tender around 150 contracts in public terminals whose concessions had expired.

(10) Would-be investors in port projects are hanging back because of the high chances of cost overruns and long delays. Two newly built private terminals at Santos that together cost more than 4 billion reais illustrate the risks. Both took years to get off the ground and years more to build. Both were finished earlier this year but remained idle for months. Brasil Terminal Portuário, a private terminal within the public port, is still waiting for the government to dredge its access channel. At Embraport, which is outside the public-port area, union members from Santos blocked road access and boarded any ships that tried to dock. Rather than enforcing the law that allows such terminals to use their own workers, the government summoned the management to Brasília for some arm-twisting. In August Embraport agreed to take the union members “on a trial basis”.

(11) Given such regulatory and execution risks, there are unlikely to be many takers for either rail or port projects as currently conceived, says Bruno Savaris, an infrastructure analyst at Credit Suisse. He predicts that at most a third of the planned investments will be auctioned in the next three years: airports, a few simple port projects and the best toll roads. That is far short of what Brazil needs. The good news, says Mr Savaris, is that the government is at last beginning to understand that it must either reduce the risks for private investors or raise their returns. Private know-how and money will be vital to get Brazil moving again.

(www.economist.com/news/special-report. Adapted)

MEMORY

by Adam Hadhazy

1 Flavonoids, a group of chemicals commonly found in plants, are often credited as having “superfood” powers. One of them, epicatechin (epi) — abundant in chocolate, green tea, and red wine — allegedly reduces the risk of heart disease, diabetes, and cancer, among other virtues. It is also thought to improve memory. But is that so? The answer, for the memory benefit, is yes, at least if you are a snail.

2 Neuroscientist Kenneth D. Lukowiak of the University of Calgary, Canada, and two colleagues tested the power of epi as a memory enhancer in the pond snail Lymnaea stagnalis. Pond snails breathe through their skin when in waters rich in oxygen, but if oxygen becomes scarce, the mollusks go to the surface and breath through an orifice — the pneumostome —connected to a simple lung. By gently poking the pneumostome with a stick when a snail tries to open it, researchers can condition snails to come up for air less frequently. And that is what the team did.

3 They trained snails with the stick in plain pond water and in epi-infused water and compared the duration of their memory. After a half-hour session, snails in plain water learned to attempt fewer breaths — and remembered their lessons for about three hours. Snails exposed to epi, on the other hand, kept up their modified behavior a full day later. And snails trained in epi-rich water for two half-hour sessions continued to surface less often for air three days on. Snails trained in epi also had stronger memories than snails trained in regular water — that is, it was harder to train them to ignore what they had learned.

4 Epi still improved snail memory after the researchers blocked the animals’ serotonin receptors and after they severed innervation to the osphradium, a chemical sensory organ, suggesting that epi might act via a mechanism different from those previously known in snails. “Our present, as yet unproved, hypothesis is that epi directly works on neurons,” says Lukowiak.

Adapted from Natural History, November, 2012

MEMORY

by Adam Hadhazy

1 Flavonoids, a group of chemicals commonly found in plants, are often credited as having “superfood” powers. One of them, epicatechin (epi) — abundant in chocolate, green tea, and red wine — allegedly reduces the risk of heart disease, diabetes, and cancer, among other virtues. It is also thought to improve memory. But is that so? The answer, for the memory benefit, is yes, at least if you are a snail.

2 Neuroscientist Kenneth D. Lukowiak of the University of Calgary, Canada, and two colleagues tested the power of epi as a memory enhancer in the pond snail Lymnaea stagnalis. Pond snails breathe through their skin when in waters rich in oxygen, but if oxygen becomes scarce, the mollusks go to the surface and breath through an orifice — the pneumostome —connected to a simple lung. By gently poking the pneumostome with a stick when a snail tries to open it, researchers can condition snails to come up for air less frequently. And that is what the team did.

3 They trained snails with the stick in plain pond water and in epi-infused water and compared the duration of their memory. After a half-hour session, snails in plain water learned to attempt fewer breaths — and remembered their lessons for about three hours. Snails exposed to epi, on the other hand, kept up their modified behavior a full day later. And snails trained in epi-rich water for two half-hour sessions continued to surface less often for air three days on. Snails trained in epi also had stronger memories than snails trained in regular water — that is, it was harder to train them to ignore what they had learned.

4 Epi still improved snail memory after the researchers blocked the animals’ serotonin receptors and after they severed innervation to the osphradium, a chemical sensory organ, suggesting that epi might act via a mechanism different from those previously known in snails. “Our present, as yet unproved, hypothesis is that epi directly works on neurons,” says Lukowiak.

Adapted from Natural History, November, 2012

MEMORY

by Adam Hadhazy

1 Flavonoids, a group of chemicals commonly found in plants, are often credited as having “superfood” powers. One of them, epicatechin (epi) — abundant in chocolate, green tea, and red wine — allegedly reduces the risk of heart disease, diabetes, and cancer, among other virtues. It is also thought to improve memory. But is that so? The answer, for the memory benefit, is yes, at least if you are a snail.

2 Neuroscientist Kenneth D. Lukowiak of the University of Calgary, Canada, and two colleagues tested the power of epi as a memory enhancer in the pond snail Lymnaea stagnalis. Pond snails breathe through their skin when in waters rich in oxygen, but if oxygen becomes scarce, the mollusks go to the surface and breath through an orifice — the pneumostome —connected to a simple lung. By gently poking the pneumostome with a stick when a snail tries to open it, researchers can condition snails to come up for air less frequently. And that is what the team did.

3 They trained snails with the stick in plain pond water and in epi-infused water and compared the duration of their memory. After a half-hour session, snails in plain water learned to attempt fewer breaths — and remembered their lessons for about three hours. Snails exposed to epi, on the other hand, kept up their modified behavior a full day later. And snails trained in epi-rich water for two half-hour sessions continued to surface less often for air three days on. Snails trained in epi also had stronger memories than snails trained in regular water — that is, it was harder to train them to ignore what they had learned.

4 Epi still improved snail memory after the researchers blocked the animals’ serotonin receptors and after they severed innervation to the osphradium, a chemical sensory organ, suggesting that epi might act via a mechanism different from those previously known in snails. “Our present, as yet unproved, hypothesis is that epi directly works on neurons,” says Lukowiak.

Adapted from Natural History, November, 2012

MEMORY

by Adam Hadhazy

1 Flavonoids, a group of chemicals commonly found in plants, are often credited as having “superfood” powers. One of them, epicatechin (epi) — abundant in chocolate, green tea, and red wine — allegedly reduces the risk of heart disease, diabetes, and cancer, among other virtues. It is also thought to improve memory. But is that so? The answer, for the memory benefit, is yes, at least if you are a snail.

2 Neuroscientist Kenneth D. Lukowiak of the University of Calgary, Canada, and two colleagues tested the power of epi as a memory enhancer in the pond snail Lymnaea stagnalis. Pond snails breathe through their skin when in waters rich in oxygen, but if oxygen becomes scarce, the mollusks go to the surface and breath through an orifice — the pneumostome —connected to a simple lung. By gently poking the pneumostome with a stick when a snail tries to open it, researchers can condition snails to come up for air less frequently. And that is what the team did.

3 They trained snails with the stick in plain pond water and in epi-infused water and compared the duration of their memory. After a half-hour session, snails in plain water learned to attempt fewer breaths — and remembered their lessons for about three hours. Snails exposed to epi, on the other hand, kept up their modified behavior a full day later. And snails trained in epi-rich water for two half-hour sessions continued to surface less often for air three days on. Snails trained in epi also had stronger memories than snails trained in regular water — that is, it was harder to train them to ignore what they had learned.

4 Epi still improved snail memory after the researchers blocked the animals’ serotonin receptors and after they severed innervation to the osphradium, a chemical sensory organ, suggesting that epi might act via a mechanism different from those previously known in snails. “Our present, as yet unproved, hypothesis is that epi directly works on neurons,” says Lukowiak.

Adapted from Natural History, November, 2012

MEMORY

by Adam Hadhazy

1 Flavonoids, a group of chemicals commonly found in plants, are often credited as having “superfood” powers. One of them, epicatechin (epi) — abundant in chocolate, green tea, and red wine — allegedly reduces the risk of heart disease, diabetes, and cancer, among other virtues. It is also thought to improve memory. But is that so? The answer, for the memory benefit, is yes, at least if you are a snail.

2 Neuroscientist Kenneth D. Lukowiak of the University of Calgary, Canada, and two colleagues tested the power of epi as a memory enhancer in the pond snail Lymnaea stagnalis. Pond snails breathe through their skin when in waters rich in oxygen, but if oxygen becomes scarce, the mollusks go to the surface and breath through an orifice — the pneumostome —connected to a simple lung. By gently poking the pneumostome with a stick when a snail tries to open it, researchers can condition snails to come up for air less frequently. And that is what the team did.

3 They trained snails with the stick in plain pond water and in epi-infused water and compared the duration of their memory. After a half-hour session, snails in plain water learned to attempt fewer breaths — and remembered their lessons for about three hours. Snails exposed to epi, on the other hand, kept up their modified behavior a full day later. And snails trained in epi-rich water for two half-hour sessions continued to surface less often for air three days on. Snails trained in epi also had stronger memories than snails trained in regular water — that is, it was harder to train them to ignore what they had learned.

4 Epi still improved snail memory after the researchers blocked the animals’ serotonin receptors and after they severed innervation to the osphradium, a chemical sensory organ, suggesting that epi might act via a mechanism different from those previously known in snails. “Our present, as yet unproved, hypothesis is that epi directly works on neurons,” says Lukowiak.

Adapted from Natural History, November, 2012

MEMORY

by Adam Hadhazy

1 Flavonoids, a group of chemicals commonly found in plants, are often credited as having “superfood” powers. One of them, epicatechin (epi) — abundant in chocolate, green tea, and red wine — allegedly reduces the risk of heart disease, diabetes, and cancer, among other virtues. It is also thought to improve memory. But is that so? The answer, for the memory benefit, is yes, at least if you are a snail.

2 Neuroscientist Kenneth D. Lukowiak of the University of Calgary, Canada, and two colleagues tested the power of epi as a memory enhancer in the pond snail Lymnaea stagnalis. Pond snails breathe through their skin when in waters rich in oxygen, but if oxygen becomes scarce, the mollusks go to the surface and breath through an orifice — the pneumostome —connected to a simple lung. By gently poking the pneumostome with a stick when a snail tries to open it, researchers can condition snails to come up for air less frequently. And that is what the team did.

3 They trained snails with the stick in plain pond water and in epi-infused water and compared the duration of their memory. After a half-hour session, snails in plain water learned to attempt fewer breaths — and remembered their lessons for about three hours. Snails exposed to epi, on the other hand, kept up their modified behavior a full day later. And snails trained in epi-rich water for two half-hour sessions continued to surface less often for air three days on. Snails trained in epi also had stronger memories than snails trained in regular water — that is, it was harder to train them to ignore what they had learned.

4 Epi still improved snail memory after the researchers blocked the animals’ serotonin receptors and after they severed innervation to the osphradium, a chemical sensory organ, suggesting that epi might act via a mechanism different from those previously known in snails. “Our present, as yet unproved, hypothesis is that epi directly works on neurons,” says Lukowiak.

Adapted from Natural History, November, 2012

MEMORY

by Adam Hadhazy

1 Flavonoids, a group of chemicals commonly found in plants, are often credited as having “superfood” powers. One of them, epicatechin (epi) — abundant in chocolate, green tea, and red wine — allegedly reduces the risk of heart disease, diabetes, and cancer, among other virtues. It is also thought to improve memory. But is that so? The answer, for the memory benefit, is yes, at least if you are a snail.

2 Neuroscientist Kenneth D. Lukowiak of the University of Calgary, Canada, and two colleagues tested the power of epi as a memory enhancer in the pond snail Lymnaea stagnalis. Pond snails breathe through their skin when in waters rich in oxygen, but if oxygen becomes scarce, the mollusks go to the surface and breath through an orifice — the pneumostome —connected to a simple lung. By gently poking the pneumostome with a stick when a snail tries to open it, researchers can condition snails to come up for air less frequently. And that is what the team did.

3 They trained snails with the stick in plain pond water and in epi-infused water and compared the duration of their memory. After a half-hour session, snails in plain water learned to attempt fewer breaths — and remembered their lessons for about three hours. Snails exposed to epi, on the other hand, kept up their modified behavior a full day later. And snails trained in epi-rich water for two half-hour sessions continued to surface less often for air three days on. Snails trained in epi also had stronger memories than snails trained in regular water — that is, it was harder to train them to ignore what they had learned.

4 Epi still improved snail memory after the researchers blocked the animals’ serotonin receptors and after they severed innervation to the osphradium, a chemical sensory organ, suggesting that epi might act via a mechanism different from those previously known in snails. “Our present, as yet unproved, hypothesis is that epi directly works on neurons,” says Lukowiak.

Adapted from Natural History, November, 2012

MEMORY

by Adam Hadhazy

1 Flavonoids, a group of chemicals commonly found in plants, are often credited as having “superfood” powers. One of them, epicatechin (epi) — abundant in chocolate, green tea, and red wine — allegedly reduces the risk of heart disease, diabetes, and cancer, among other virtues. It is also thought to improve memory. But is that so? The answer, for the memory benefit, is yes, at least if you are a snail.

2 Neuroscientist Kenneth D. Lukowiak of the University of Calgary, Canada, and two colleagues tested the power of epi as a memory enhancer in the pond snail Lymnaea stagnalis. Pond snails breathe through their skin when in waters rich in oxygen, but if oxygen becomes scarce, the mollusks go to the surface and breath through an orifice — the pneumostome —connected to a simple lung. By gently poking the pneumostome with a stick when a snail tries to open it, researchers can condition snails to come up for air less frequently. And that is what the team did.

3 They trained snails with the stick in plain pond water and in epi-infused water and compared the duration of their memory. After a half-hour session, snails in plain water learned to attempt fewer breaths — and remembered their lessons for about three hours. Snails exposed to epi, on the other hand, kept up their modified behavior a full day later. And snails trained in epi-rich water for two half-hour sessions continued to surface less often for air three days on. Snails trained in epi also had stronger memories than snails trained in regular water — that is, it was harder to train them to ignore what they had learned.

4 Epi still improved snail memory after the researchers blocked the animals’ serotonin receptors and after they severed innervation to the osphradium, a chemical sensory organ, suggesting that epi might act via a mechanism different from those previously known in snails. “Our present, as yet unproved, hypothesis is that epi directly works on neurons,” says Lukowiak.

Adapted from Natural History, November, 2012

NO HURRICANE TONIGHT

By Philip Ball

1 Isn’t it strange how we like to regard weather forecasting as a uniquely incompetent science—as though this subject of vital economic and social importance can attract only the most inept researchers, armed with bungling, bogus theories?

2 That joke, however, is becoming less funny. With Britain’s, and probably the world’s, weather becoming more variable and prone to extremes, an inaccurate forecast risks more than a wet garden party, potentially leaving us unprepared for life-threatening floods or ruined harvests.

3 Perhaps this new need to take forecasting seriously will eventually win it the respect it deserves. Part of the reason we love to highlight the disastrously misplaced reassurance from Michael Fish, the BBC’s TV weatherman, is that there has been no comparable failure since. “Earlier today,” said Fish, “apparently, a woman phoned the BBC and said she heard there was a hurricane on the way; well, if you’re watching, don’t worry – there isn’t.” Hours later, the great storm of 1987 struck. As meteorologists and applied mathematicians Ian Roulstone and John Norbury point out in their account of the maths of weather prediction, Invisible in the Storm, the five-day forecast is, at least in western Europe, now more reliable than the threeday forecast was when the 1987 storm raged. There has been a steady improvement in accuracy over this period and, popular wisdom to the contrary, prediction has long been far superior to simply assuming that tomorrow´s weather will be the same as today’s.

4 Weather forecasting is hard not in the way that fundamental physics is hard. It’s not that the ideas are so confusing, but that the basic equations are extremely tough to solve, and that hiding within them is a barrier to prediction that must defeat even the most profound mind. Weather is intrinsically unknowable more than two weeks ahead, because it is an example of a chaotic system, in which imperceptible differences in two initial states can blossom into grossly different eventual outcomes. Indeed, it was the work of the American meteorologist Edward Lorenz in the 1960s, using a set of highly simplified equations to determine patterns of atmospheric convection, that first alerted the scientific community to the notion of chaos: the inevitable divergence of all but identical initial states as they evolve over time.

5 It’s not obvious that weather should be susceptible to mathematical analysis in the first place. Wind and rain and blazing heat seem subject to caprice, and it’s no wonder they were long considered a matter of divine providence.

Adapted from Prospect, February, 2013

NO HURRICANE TONIGHT

By Philip Ball

1 Isn’t it strange how we like to regard weather forecasting as a uniquely incompetent science—as though this subject of vital economic and social importance can attract only the most inept researchers, armed with bungling, bogus theories?

2 That joke, however, is becoming less funny. With Britain’s, and probably the world’s, weather becoming more variable and prone to extremes, an inaccurate forecast risks more than a wet garden party, potentially leaving us unprepared for life-threatening floods or ruined harvests.

3 Perhaps this new need to take forecasting seriously will eventually win it the respect it deserves. Part of the reason we love to highlight the disastrously misplaced reassurance from Michael Fish, the BBC’s TV weatherman, is that there has been no comparable failure since. “Earlier today,” said Fish, “apparently, a woman phoned the BBC and said she heard there was a hurricane on the way; well, if you’re watching, don’t worry – there isn’t.” Hours later, the great storm of 1987 struck. As meteorologists and applied mathematicians Ian Roulstone and John Norbury point out in their account of the maths of weather prediction, Invisible in the Storm, the five-day forecast is, at least in western Europe, now more reliable than the threeday forecast was when the 1987 storm raged. There has been a steady improvement in accuracy over this period and, popular wisdom to the contrary, prediction has long been far superior to simply assuming that tomorrow´s weather will be the same as today’s.

4 Weather forecasting is hard not in the way that fundamental physics is hard. It’s not that the ideas are so confusing, but that the basic equations are extremely tough to solve, and that hiding within them is a barrier to prediction that must defeat even the most profound mind. Weather is intrinsically unknowable more than two weeks ahead, because it is an example of a chaotic system, in which imperceptible differences in two initial states can blossom into grossly different eventual outcomes. Indeed, it was the work of the American meteorologist Edward Lorenz in the 1960s, using a set of highly simplified equations to determine patterns of atmospheric convection, that first alerted the scientific community to the notion of chaos: the inevitable divergence of all but identical initial states as they evolve over time.

5 It’s not obvious that weather should be susceptible to mathematical analysis in the first place. Wind and rain and blazing heat seem subject to caprice, and it’s no wonder they were long considered a matter of divine providence.

Adapted from Prospect, February, 2013

NO HURRICANE TONIGHT

By Philip Ball

1 Isn’t it strange how we like to regard weather forecasting as a uniquely incompetent science—as though this subject of vital economic and social importance can attract only the most inept researchers, armed with bungling, bogus theories?

2 That joke, however, is becoming less funny. With Britain’s, and probably the world’s, weather becoming more variable and prone to extremes, an inaccurate forecast risks more than a wet garden party, potentially leaving us unprepared for life-threatening floods or ruined harvests.

3 Perhaps this new need to take forecasting seriously will eventually win it the respect it deserves. Part of the reason we love to highlight the disastrously misplaced reassurance from Michael Fish, the BBC’s TV weatherman, is that there has been no comparable failure since. “Earlier today,” said Fish, “apparently, a woman phoned the BBC and said she heard there was a hurricane on the way; well, if you’re watching, don’t worry – there isn’t.” Hours later, the great storm of 1987 struck. As meteorologists and applied mathematicians Ian Roulstone and John Norbury point out in their account of the maths of weather prediction, Invisible in the Storm, the five-day forecast is, at least in western Europe, now more reliable than the threeday forecast was when the 1987 storm raged. There has been a steady improvement in accuracy over this period and, popular wisdom to the contrary, prediction has long been far superior to simply assuming that tomorrow´s weather will be the same as today’s.

4 Weather forecasting is hard not in the way that fundamental physics is hard. It’s not that the ideas are so confusing, but that the basic equations are extremely tough to solve, and that hiding within them is a barrier to prediction that must defeat even the most profound mind. Weather is intrinsically unknowable more than two weeks ahead, because it is an example of a chaotic system, in which imperceptible differences in two initial states can blossom into grossly different eventual outcomes. Indeed, it was the work of the American meteorologist Edward Lorenz in the 1960s, using a set of highly simplified equations to determine patterns of atmospheric convection, that first alerted the scientific community to the notion of chaos: the inevitable divergence of all but identical initial states as they evolve over time.

5 It’s not obvious that weather should be susceptible to mathematical analysis in the first place. Wind and rain and blazing heat seem subject to caprice, and it’s no wonder they were long considered a matter of divine providence.

Adapted from Prospect, February, 2013

NO HURRICANE TONIGHT

By Philip Ball

1 Isn’t it strange how we like to regard weather forecasting as a uniquely incompetent science—as though this subject of vital economic and social importance can attract only the most inept researchers, armed with bungling, bogus theories?

2 That joke, however, is becoming less funny. With Britain’s, and probably the world’s, weather becoming more variable and prone to extremes, an inaccurate forecast risks more than a wet garden party, potentially leaving us unprepared for life-threatening floods or ruined harvests.

3 Perhaps this new need to take forecasting seriously will eventually win it the respect it deserves. Part of the reason we love to highlight the disastrously misplaced reassurance from Michael Fish, the BBC’s TV weatherman, is that there has been no comparable failure since. “Earlier today,” said Fish, “apparently, a woman phoned the BBC and said she heard there was a hurricane on the way; well, if you’re watching, don’t worry – there isn’t.” Hours later, the great storm of 1987 struck. As meteorologists and applied mathematicians Ian Roulstone and John Norbury point out in their account of the maths of weather prediction, Invisible in the Storm, the five-day forecast is, at least in western Europe, now more reliable than the threeday forecast was when the 1987 storm raged. There has been a steady improvement in accuracy over this period and, popular wisdom to the contrary, prediction has long been far superior to simply assuming that tomorrow´s weather will be the same as today’s.

4 Weather forecasting is hard not in the way that fundamental physics is hard. It’s not that the ideas are so confusing, but that the basic equations are extremely tough to solve, and that hiding within them is a barrier to prediction that must defeat even the most profound mind. Weather is intrinsically unknowable more than two weeks ahead, because it is an example of a chaotic system, in which imperceptible differences in two initial states can blossom into grossly different eventual outcomes. Indeed, it was the work of the American meteorologist Edward Lorenz in the 1960s, using a set of highly simplified equations to determine patterns of atmospheric convection, that first alerted the scientific community to the notion of chaos: the inevitable divergence of all but identical initial states as they evolve over time.

5 It’s not obvious that weather should be susceptible to mathematical analysis in the first place. Wind and rain and blazing heat seem subject to caprice, and it’s no wonder they were long considered a matter of divine providence.

Adapted from Prospect, February, 2013

NO HURRICANE TONIGHT

By Philip Ball

1 Isn’t it strange how we like to regard weather forecasting as a uniquely incompetent science—as though this subject of vital economic and social importance can attract only the most inept researchers, armed with bungling, bogus theories?

2 That joke, however, is becoming less funny. With Britain’s, and probably the world’s, weather becoming more variable and prone to extremes, an inaccurate forecast risks more than a wet garden party, potentially leaving us unprepared for life-threatening floods or ruined harvests.

3 Perhaps this new need to take forecasting seriously will eventually win it the respect it deserves. Part of the reason we love to highlight the disastrously misplaced reassurance from Michael Fish, the BBC’s TV weatherman, is that there has been no comparable failure since. “Earlier today,” said Fish, “apparently, a woman phoned the BBC and said she heard there was a hurricane on the way; well, if you’re watching, don’t worry – there isn’t.” Hours later, the great storm of 1987 struck. As meteorologists and applied mathematicians Ian Roulstone and John Norbury point out in their account of the maths of weather prediction, Invisible in the Storm, the five-day forecast is, at least in western Europe, now more reliable than the threeday forecast was when the 1987 storm raged. There has been a steady improvement in accuracy over this period and, popular wisdom to the contrary, prediction has long been far superior to simply assuming that tomorrow´s weather will be the same as today’s.

4 Weather forecasting is hard not in the way that fundamental physics is hard. It’s not that the ideas are so confusing, but that the basic equations are extremely tough to solve, and that hiding within them is a barrier to prediction that must defeat even the most profound mind. Weather is intrinsically unknowable more than two weeks ahead, because it is an example of a chaotic system, in which imperceptible differences in two initial states can blossom into grossly different eventual outcomes. Indeed, it was the work of the American meteorologist Edward Lorenz in the 1960s, using a set of highly simplified equations to determine patterns of atmospheric convection, that first alerted the scientific community to the notion of chaos: the inevitable divergence of all but identical initial states as they evolve over time.

5 It’s not obvious that weather should be susceptible to mathematical analysis in the first place. Wind and rain and blazing heat seem subject to caprice, and it’s no wonder they were long considered a matter of divine providence.

Adapted from Prospect, February, 2013

NO HURRICANE TONIGHT

By Philip Ball

1 Isn’t it strange how we like to regard weather forecasting as a uniquely incompetent science—as though this subject of vital economic and social importance can attract only the most inept researchers, armed with bungling, bogus theories?

2 That joke, however, is becoming less funny. With Britain’s, and probably the world’s, weather becoming more variable and prone to extremes, an inaccurate forecast risks more than a wet garden party, potentially leaving us unprepared for life-threatening floods or ruined harvests.

3 Perhaps this new need to take forecasting seriously will eventually win it the respect it deserves. Part of the reason we love to highlight the disastrously misplaced reassurance from Michael Fish, the BBC’s TV weatherman, is that there has been no comparable failure since. “Earlier today,” said Fish, “apparently, a woman phoned the BBC and said she heard there was a hurricane on the way; well, if you’re watching, don’t worry – there isn’t.” Hours later, the great storm of 1987 struck. As meteorologists and applied mathematicians Ian Roulstone and John Norbury point out in their account of the maths of weather prediction, Invisible in the Storm, the five-day forecast is, at least in western Europe, now more reliable than the threeday forecast was when the 1987 storm raged. There has been a steady improvement in accuracy over this period and, popular wisdom to the contrary, prediction has long been far superior to simply assuming that tomorrow´s weather will be the same as today’s.

4 Weather forecasting is hard not in the way that fundamental physics is hard. It’s not that the ideas are so confusing, but that the basic equations are extremely tough to solve, and that hiding within them is a barrier to prediction that must defeat even the most profound mind. Weather is intrinsically unknowable more than two weeks ahead, because it is an example of a chaotic system, in which imperceptible differences in two initial states can blossom into grossly different eventual outcomes. Indeed, it was the work of the American meteorologist Edward Lorenz in the 1960s, using a set of highly simplified equations to determine patterns of atmospheric convection, that first alerted the scientific community to the notion of chaos: the inevitable divergence of all but identical initial states as they evolve over time.

5 It’s not obvious that weather should be susceptible to mathematical analysis in the first place. Wind and rain and blazing heat seem subject to caprice, and it’s no wonder they were long considered a matter of divine providence.

Adapted from Prospect, February, 2013

NO HURRICANE TONIGHT

By Philip Ball

1 Isn’t it strange how we like to regard weather forecasting as a uniquely incompetent science—as though this subject of vital economic and social importance can attract only the most inept researchers, armed with bungling, bogus theories?

2 That joke, however, is becoming less funny. With Britain’s, and probably the world’s, weather becoming more variable and prone to extremes, an inaccurate forecast risks more than a wet garden party, potentially leaving us unprepared for life-threatening floods or ruined harvests.

3 Perhaps this new need to take forecasting seriously will eventually win it the respect it deserves. Part of the reason we love to highlight the disastrously misplaced reassurance from Michael Fish, the BBC’s TV weatherman, is that there has been no comparable failure since. “Earlier today,” said Fish, “apparently, a woman phoned the BBC and said she heard there was a hurricane on the way; well, if you’re watching, don’t worry – there isn’t.” Hours later, the great storm of 1987 struck. As meteorologists and applied mathematicians Ian Roulstone and John Norbury point out in their account of the maths of weather prediction, Invisible in the Storm, the five-day forecast is, at least in western Europe, now more reliable than the threeday forecast was when the 1987 storm raged. There has been a steady improvement in accuracy over this period and, popular wisdom to the contrary, prediction has long been far superior to simply assuming that tomorrow´s weather will be the same as today’s.

4 Weather forecasting is hard not in the way that fundamental physics is hard. It’s not that the ideas are so confusing, but that the basic equations are extremely tough to solve, and that hiding within them is a barrier to prediction that must defeat even the most profound mind. Weather is intrinsically unknowable more than two weeks ahead, because it is an example of a chaotic system, in which imperceptible differences in two initial states can blossom into grossly different eventual outcomes. Indeed, it was the work of the American meteorologist Edward Lorenz in the 1960s, using a set of highly simplified equations to determine patterns of atmospheric convection, that first alerted the scientific community to the notion of chaos: the inevitable divergence of all but identical initial states as they evolve over time.

5 It’s not obvious that weather should be susceptible to mathematical analysis in the first place. Wind and rain and blazing heat seem subject to caprice, and it’s no wonder they were long considered a matter of divine providence.

Adapted from Prospect, February, 2013

LIBERALS AND ISLAMISTS

By Shadi Hamid

It’s not easy being a liberal in the Arab world; you are doomed to face frustration on election day. In a religiously conservative country like Egypt, it is difficult for liberal parties — which often lack deep local networks and grassroots support — to win in free elections. But even under the increasingly heavyhanded rule of President Mohamed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood allies, liberals had a chance to work within the system to counterbalance Morsi. Most liberals opted not to meet that challenge and supported the June 2012 dissolution of Egypt’s democratically elected parliament. And when the military deposed Morsi on July 3, most backed that move too. “It was a painful decision,” said Mohamed ElBaradei, Egypt’s most prominent liberal politician, who has taken the position of acting Vice President in the new militarybacked government. “It was outside the legal framework, but we had no other choice.”

2 The liberal chorus that supported Morsi’s expulsion argues it is sometimes necessary to put democracy on pause in order to save it. That’s an old story. In Algeria, liberals largely stood by — or actively cheered on — as the military aborted the country’s 1992 elections when Islamists were poised to win, provoking a bloody civil war that would rage for years. Algerian democracy remains paused to this day. Yet, many liberals across the Arab world fear, even hate, Islamists more than they are willing to believe in democracy.

3 In the Egyptian context, the word liberal is often used as a general term for people who don’t like Islamists. It is unclear what liberalism really means in a country like Egypt, where many who would selfidentify as liberal engage in army worship or believe Islamist parties should be banned from even contesting elections in the first place. On the other hand, Islamists have a distinctive worldview — and a project for transforming the individual and society in accordance with Islamic law. Liberals and Islamists have become ever more ideologically divided in the Arab Spring countries.

4 Take the situation in which Tunisia’s Ennahda party finds itself, especially since the recent assassinations of two leftist politicans have threatened to block the democratic transition. The Islamist party has avoided many of the mistakes of its Egyptian counterparts. It has governed in coalition with two secular parties, withdrawn references to Islamic law in the draft constitution, and has done very little that could be considered extremist. Yet Tunisia’s liberals routinely accuse Ennahda of being hidden radicals waiting for the right moment to implement an extremist agenda.

5 Many Egyptian liberals have given way to their fears, leading them to embrace a military hungry for control. The new order has quickly proved more repressive than the Morsi government ever was during its one year in power. The Ministry of Interior has announced the reinstatement of departments to monitor political and religious activism. And Egyptians have just seen what happens when protesters defy the military; security forces shot dead at least 140 Morsi supporters on July 8 and July 27. 6 Just after the coup, ElBaradei declared: “[The army] has no interest in taking a forward role in politics.” Such talk now looks absurd.

Adapted from Time, August 12, 2013.

LIBERALS AND ISLAMISTS

By Shadi Hamid

It’s not easy being a liberal in the Arab world; you are doomed to face frustration on election day. In a religiously conservative country like Egypt, it is difficult for liberal parties — which often lack deep local networks and grassroots support — to win in free elections. But even under the increasingly heavyhanded rule of President Mohamed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood allies, liberals had a chance to work within the system to counterbalance Morsi. Most liberals opted not to meet that challenge and supported the June 2012 dissolution of Egypt’s democratically elected parliament. And when the military deposed Morsi on July 3, most backed that move too. “It was a painful decision,” said Mohamed ElBaradei, Egypt’s most prominent liberal politician, who has taken the position of acting Vice President in the new militarybacked government. “It was outside the legal framework, but we had no other choice.”

2 The liberal chorus that supported Morsi’s expulsion argues it is sometimes necessary to put democracy on pause in order to save it. That’s an old story. In Algeria, liberals largely stood by — or actively cheered on — as the military aborted the country’s 1992 elections when Islamists were poised to win, provoking a bloody civil war that would rage for years. Algerian democracy remains paused to this day. Yet, many liberals across the Arab world fear, even hate, Islamists more than they are willing to believe in democracy.

3 In the Egyptian context, the word liberal is often used as a general term for people who don’t like Islamists. It is unclear what liberalism really means in a country like Egypt, where many who would selfidentify as liberal engage in army worship or believe Islamist parties should be banned from even contesting elections in the first place. On the other hand, Islamists have a distinctive worldview — and a project for transforming the individual and society in accordance with Islamic law. Liberals and Islamists have become ever more ideologically divided in the Arab Spring countries.

4 Take the situation in which Tunisia’s Ennahda party finds itself, especially since the recent assassinations of two leftist politicans have threatened to block the democratic transition. The Islamist party has avoided many of the mistakes of its Egyptian counterparts. It has governed in coalition with two secular parties, withdrawn references to Islamic law in the draft constitution, and has done very little that could be considered extremist. Yet Tunisia’s liberals routinely accuse Ennahda of being hidden radicals waiting for the right moment to implement an extremist agenda.

5 Many Egyptian liberals have given way to their fears, leading them to embrace a military hungry for control. The new order has quickly proved more repressive than the Morsi government ever was during its one year in power. The Ministry of Interior has announced the reinstatement of departments to monitor political and religious activism. And Egyptians have just seen what happens when protesters defy the military; security forces shot dead at least 140 Morsi supporters on July 8 and July 27. 6 Just after the coup, ElBaradei declared: “[The army] has no interest in taking a forward role in politics.” Such talk now looks absurd.

Adapted from Time, August 12, 2013.

LIBERALS AND ISLAMISTS

By Shadi Hamid

It’s not easy being a liberal in the Arab world; you are doomed to face frustration on election day. In a religiously conservative country like Egypt, it is difficult for liberal parties — which often lack deep local networks and grassroots support — to win in free elections. But even under the increasingly heavyhanded rule of President Mohamed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood allies, liberals had a chance to work within the system to counterbalance Morsi. Most liberals opted not to meet that challenge and supported the June 2012 dissolution of Egypt’s democratically elected parliament. And when the military deposed Morsi on July 3, most backed that move too. “It was a painful decision,” said Mohamed ElBaradei, Egypt’s most prominent liberal politician, who has taken the position of acting Vice President in the new militarybacked government. “It was outside the legal framework, but we had no other choice.”

2 The liberal chorus that supported Morsi’s expulsion argues it is sometimes necessary to put democracy on pause in order to save it. That’s an old story. In Algeria, liberals largely stood by — or actively cheered on — as the military aborted the country’s 1992 elections when Islamists were poised to win, provoking a bloody civil war that would rage for years. Algerian democracy remains paused to this day. Yet, many liberals across the Arab world fear, even hate, Islamists more than they are willing to believe in democracy.

3 In the Egyptian context, the word liberal is often used as a general term for people who don’t like Islamists. It is unclear what liberalism really means in a country like Egypt, where many who would selfidentify as liberal engage in army worship or believe Islamist parties should be banned from even contesting elections in the first place. On the other hand, Islamists have a distinctive worldview — and a project for transforming the individual and society in accordance with Islamic law. Liberals and Islamists have become ever more ideologically divided in the Arab Spring countries.

4 Take the situation in which Tunisia’s Ennahda party finds itself, especially since the recent assassinations of two leftist politicans have threatened to block the democratic transition. The Islamist party has avoided many of the mistakes of its Egyptian counterparts. It has governed in coalition with two secular parties, withdrawn references to Islamic law in the draft constitution, and has done very little that could be considered extremist. Yet Tunisia’s liberals routinely accuse Ennahda of being hidden radicals waiting for the right moment to implement an extremist agenda.

5 Many Egyptian liberals have given way to their fears, leading them to embrace a military hungry for control. The new order has quickly proved more repressive than the Morsi government ever was during its one year in power. The Ministry of Interior has announced the reinstatement of departments to monitor political and religious activism. And Egyptians have just seen what happens when protesters defy the military; security forces shot dead at least 140 Morsi supporters on July 8 and July 27. 6 Just after the coup, ElBaradei declared: “[The army] has no interest in taking a forward role in politics.” Such talk now looks absurd.

Adapted from Time, August 12, 2013.

LIBERALS AND ISLAMISTS

By Shadi Hamid

It’s not easy being a liberal in the Arab world; you are doomed to face frustration on election day. In a religiously conservative country like Egypt, it is difficult for liberal parties — which often lack deep local networks and grassroots support — to win in free elections. But even under the increasingly heavyhanded rule of President Mohamed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood allies, liberals had a chance to work within the system to counterbalance Morsi. Most liberals opted not to meet that challenge and supported the June 2012 dissolution of Egypt’s democratically elected parliament. And when the military deposed Morsi on July 3, most backed that move too. “It was a painful decision,” said Mohamed ElBaradei, Egypt’s most prominent liberal politician, who has taken the position of acting Vice President in the new militarybacked government. “It was outside the legal framework, but we had no other choice.”

2 The liberal chorus that supported Morsi’s expulsion argues it is sometimes necessary to put democracy on pause in order to save it. That’s an old story. In Algeria, liberals largely stood by — or actively cheered on — as the military aborted the country’s 1992 elections when Islamists were poised to win, provoking a bloody civil war that would rage for years. Algerian democracy remains paused to this day. Yet, many liberals across the Arab world fear, even hate, Islamists more than they are willing to believe in democracy.

3 In the Egyptian context, the word liberal is often used as a general term for people who don’t like Islamists. It is unclear what liberalism really means in a country like Egypt, where many who would selfidentify as liberal engage in army worship or believe Islamist parties should be banned from even contesting elections in the first place. On the other hand, Islamists have a distinctive worldview — and a project for transforming the individual and society in accordance with Islamic law. Liberals and Islamists have become ever more ideologically divided in the Arab Spring countries.

4 Take the situation in which Tunisia’s Ennahda party finds itself, especially since the recent assassinations of two leftist politicans have threatened to block the democratic transition. The Islamist party has avoided many of the mistakes of its Egyptian counterparts. It has governed in coalition with two secular parties, withdrawn references to Islamic law in the draft constitution, and has done very little that could be considered extremist. Yet Tunisia’s liberals routinely accuse Ennahda of being hidden radicals waiting for the right moment to implement an extremist agenda.

5 Many Egyptian liberals have given way to their fears, leading them to embrace a military hungry for control. The new order has quickly proved more repressive than the Morsi government ever was during its one year in power. The Ministry of Interior has announced the reinstatement of departments to monitor political and religious activism. And Egyptians have just seen what happens when protesters defy the military; security forces shot dead at least 140 Morsi supporters on July 8 and July 27. 6 Just after the coup, ElBaradei declared: “[The army] has no interest in taking a forward role in politics.” Such talk now looks absurd.

Adapted from Time, August 12, 2013.

LIBERALS AND ISLAMISTS

By Shadi Hamid

It’s not easy being a liberal in the Arab world; you are doomed to face frustration on election day. In a religiously conservative country like Egypt, it is difficult for liberal parties — which often lack deep local networks and grassroots support — to win in free elections. But even under the increasingly heavyhanded rule of President Mohamed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood allies, liberals had a chance to work within the system to counterbalance Morsi. Most liberals opted not to meet that challenge and supported the June 2012 dissolution of Egypt’s democratically elected parliament. And when the military deposed Morsi on July 3, most backed that move too. “It was a painful decision,” said Mohamed ElBaradei, Egypt’s most prominent liberal politician, who has taken the position of acting Vice President in the new militarybacked government. “It was outside the legal framework, but we had no other choice.”

2 The liberal chorus that supported Morsi’s expulsion argues it is sometimes necessary to put democracy on pause in order to save it. That’s an old story. In Algeria, liberals largely stood by — or actively cheered on — as the military aborted the country’s 1992 elections when Islamists were poised to win, provoking a bloody civil war that would rage for years. Algerian democracy remains paused to this day. Yet, many liberals across the Arab world fear, even hate, Islamists more than they are willing to believe in democracy.

3 In the Egyptian context, the word liberal is often used as a general term for people who don’t like Islamists. It is unclear what liberalism really means in a country like Egypt, where many who would selfidentify as liberal engage in army worship or believe Islamist parties should be banned from even contesting elections in the first place. On the other hand, Islamists have a distinctive worldview — and a project for transforming the individual and society in accordance with Islamic law. Liberals and Islamists have become ever more ideologically divided in the Arab Spring countries.

4 Take the situation in which Tunisia’s Ennahda party finds itself, especially since the recent assassinations of two leftist politicans have threatened to block the democratic transition. The Islamist party has avoided many of the mistakes of its Egyptian counterparts. It has governed in coalition with two secular parties, withdrawn references to Islamic law in the draft constitution, and has done very little that could be considered extremist. Yet Tunisia’s liberals routinely accuse Ennahda of being hidden radicals waiting for the right moment to implement an extremist agenda.

5 Many Egyptian liberals have given way to their fears, leading them to embrace a military hungry for control. The new order has quickly proved more repressive than the Morsi government ever was during its one year in power. The Ministry of Interior has announced the reinstatement of departments to monitor political and religious activism. And Egyptians have just seen what happens when protesters defy the military; security forces shot dead at least 140 Morsi supporters on July 8 and July 27. 6 Just after the coup, ElBaradei declared: “[The army] has no interest in taking a forward role in politics.” Such talk now looks absurd.

Adapted from Time, August 12, 2013.

LIBERALS AND ISLAMISTS

By Shadi Hamid

It’s not easy being a liberal in the Arab world; you are doomed to face frustration on election day. In a religiously conservative country like Egypt, it is difficult for liberal parties — which often lack deep local networks and grassroots support — to win in free elections. But even under the increasingly heavyhanded rule of President Mohamed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood allies, liberals had a chance to work within the system to counterbalance Morsi. Most liberals opted not to meet that challenge and supported the June 2012 dissolution of Egypt’s democratically elected parliament. And when the military deposed Morsi on July 3, most backed that move too. “It was a painful decision,” said Mohamed ElBaradei, Egypt’s most prominent liberal politician, who has taken the position of acting Vice President in the new militarybacked government. “It was outside the legal framework, but we had no other choice.”

2 The liberal chorus that supported Morsi’s expulsion argues it is sometimes necessary to put democracy on pause in order to save it. That’s an old story. In Algeria, liberals largely stood by — or actively cheered on — as the military aborted the country’s 1992 elections when Islamists were poised to win, provoking a bloody civil war that would rage for years. Algerian democracy remains paused to this day. Yet, many liberals across the Arab world fear, even hate, Islamists more than they are willing to believe in democracy.

3 In the Egyptian context, the word liberal is often used as a general term for people who don’t like Islamists. It is unclear what liberalism really means in a country like Egypt, where many who would selfidentify as liberal engage in army worship or believe Islamist parties should be banned from even contesting elections in the first place. On the other hand, Islamists have a distinctive worldview — and a project for transforming the individual and society in accordance with Islamic law. Liberals and Islamists have become ever more ideologically divided in the Arab Spring countries.

4 Take the situation in which Tunisia’s Ennahda party finds itself, especially since the recent assassinations of two leftist politicans have threatened to block the democratic transition. The Islamist party has avoided many of the mistakes of its Egyptian counterparts. It has governed in coalition with two secular parties, withdrawn references to Islamic law in the draft constitution, and has done very little that could be considered extremist. Yet Tunisia’s liberals routinely accuse Ennahda of being hidden radicals waiting for the right moment to implement an extremist agenda.

5 Many Egyptian liberals have given way to their fears, leading them to embrace a military hungry for control. The new order has quickly proved more repressive than the Morsi government ever was during its one year in power. The Ministry of Interior has announced the reinstatement of departments to monitor political and religious activism. And Egyptians have just seen what happens when protesters defy the military; security forces shot dead at least 140 Morsi supporters on July 8 and July 27. 6 Just after the coup, ElBaradei declared: “[The army] has no interest in taking a forward role in politics.” Such talk now looks absurd.

Adapted from Time, August 12, 2013.

LIBERALS AND ISLAMISTS

By Shadi Hamid

It’s not easy being a liberal in the Arab world; you are doomed to face frustration on election day. In a religiously conservative country like Egypt, it is difficult for liberal parties — which often lack deep local networks and grassroots support — to win in free elections. But even under the increasingly heavyhanded rule of President Mohamed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood allies, liberals had a chance to work within the system to counterbalance Morsi. Most liberals opted not to meet that challenge and supported the June 2012 dissolution of Egypt’s democratically elected parliament. And when the military deposed Morsi on July 3, most backed that move too. “It was a painful decision,” said Mohamed ElBaradei, Egypt’s most prominent liberal politician, who has taken the position of acting Vice President in the new militarybacked government. “It was outside the legal framework, but we had no other choice.”

2 The liberal chorus that supported Morsi’s expulsion argues it is sometimes necessary to put democracy on pause in order to save it. That’s an old story. In Algeria, liberals largely stood by — or actively cheered on — as the military aborted the country’s 1992 elections when Islamists were poised to win, provoking a bloody civil war that would rage for years. Algerian democracy remains paused to this day. Yet, many liberals across the Arab world fear, even hate, Islamists more than they are willing to believe in democracy.

3 In the Egyptian context, the word liberal is often used as a general term for people who don’t like Islamists. It is unclear what liberalism really means in a country like Egypt, where many who would selfidentify as liberal engage in army worship or believe Islamist parties should be banned from even contesting elections in the first place. On the other hand, Islamists have a distinctive worldview — and a project for transforming the individual and society in accordance with Islamic law. Liberals and Islamists have become ever more ideologically divided in the Arab Spring countries.

4 Take the situation in which Tunisia’s Ennahda party finds itself, especially since the recent assassinations of two leftist politicans have threatened to block the democratic transition. The Islamist party has avoided many of the mistakes of its Egyptian counterparts. It has governed in coalition with two secular parties, withdrawn references to Islamic law in the draft constitution, and has done very little that could be considered extremist. Yet Tunisia’s liberals routinely accuse Ennahda of being hidden radicals waiting for the right moment to implement an extremist agenda.

5 Many Egyptian liberals have given way to their fears, leading them to embrace a military hungry for control. The new order has quickly proved more repressive than the Morsi government ever was during its one year in power. The Ministry of Interior has announced the reinstatement of departments to monitor political and religious activism. And Egyptians have just seen what happens when protesters defy the military; security forces shot dead at least 140 Morsi supporters on July 8 and July 27. 6 Just after the coup, ElBaradei declared: “[The army] has no interest in taking a forward role in politics.” Such talk now looks absurd.

Adapted from Time, August 12, 2013.

LIBERALS AND ISLAMISTS

By Shadi Hamid

It’s not easy being a liberal in the Arab world; you are doomed to face frustration on election day. In a religiously conservative country like Egypt, it is difficult for liberal parties — which often lack deep local networks and grassroots support — to win in free elections. But even under the increasingly heavyhanded rule of President Mohamed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood allies, liberals had a chance to work within the system to counterbalance Morsi. Most liberals opted not to meet that challenge and supported the June 2012 dissolution of Egypt’s democratically elected parliament. And when the military deposed Morsi on July 3, most backed that move too. “It was a painful decision,” said Mohamed ElBaradei, Egypt’s most prominent liberal politician, who has taken the position of acting Vice President in the new militarybacked government. “It was outside the legal framework, but we had no other choice.”

2 The liberal chorus that supported Morsi’s expulsion argues it is sometimes necessary to put democracy on pause in order to save it. That’s an old story. In Algeria, liberals largely stood by — or actively cheered on — as the military aborted the country’s 1992 elections when Islamists were poised to win, provoking a bloody civil war that would rage for years. Algerian democracy remains paused to this day. Yet, many liberals across the Arab world fear, even hate, Islamists more than they are willing to believe in democracy.

3 In the Egyptian context, the word liberal is often used as a general term for people who don’t like Islamists. It is unclear what liberalism really means in a country like Egypt, where many who would selfidentify as liberal engage in army worship or believe Islamist parties should be banned from even contesting elections in the first place. On the other hand, Islamists have a distinctive worldview — and a project for transforming the individual and society in accordance with Islamic law. Liberals and Islamists have become ever more ideologically divided in the Arab Spring countries.

4 Take the situation in which Tunisia’s Ennahda party finds itself, especially since the recent assassinations of two leftist politicans have threatened to block the democratic transition. The Islamist party has avoided many of the mistakes of its Egyptian counterparts. It has governed in coalition with two secular parties, withdrawn references to Islamic law in the draft constitution, and has done very little that could be considered extremist. Yet Tunisia’s liberals routinely accuse Ennahda of being hidden radicals waiting for the right moment to implement an extremist agenda.

5 Many Egyptian liberals have given way to their fears, leading them to embrace a military hungry for control. The new order has quickly proved more repressive than the Morsi government ever was during its one year in power. The Ministry of Interior has announced the reinstatement of departments to monitor political and religious activism. And Egyptians have just seen what happens when protesters defy the military; security forces shot dead at least 140 Morsi supporters on July 8 and July 27. 6 Just after the coup, ElBaradei declared: “[The army] has no interest in taking a forward role in politics.” Such talk now looks absurd.

Adapted from Time, August 12, 2013.

AIRLINE COMPENSATION

By Susan Stellin

1 The day I was supposed to fly from London to Newark this spring, British Airways sent an e-mail saying the flight had been canceled. When I called to rebook, the British Airways agent offered a flight two hours earlier, which meant my boyfriend and I had to drop everything and race to Heathrow. The payoff came a month later, when the airline sent a check for $787 (300 euros each), compensation for our inconvenience.
2 Travelers on flights that are canceled or delayed must often accept whatever rebooking an airline offers, even if it means getting stranded at an airport for days. In the United States airlines aren’t required to compensate passengers on delayed or canceled flights, but it’s a different story in Europe. The payment that my boyfriend and I received was required by the European Union’s passenger rights law, EC 261, which obligates airlines to pay for a hotel room and meals if travelers are stranded because of a cancellation or delay.
3 If the problem is the airline’s fault — for instance, our cancellation was due to a malfunctioning plane — the carrier is supposed to compensate passengers up to 600 euros, based on the length of the flight and how long you’re delayed. I was surprised that we qualified since we actually got an earlier flight, but the law covers situations when passengers have little advance notice and have to change their plans.
4 EC 261 applies to any airline departing from the European Union — including American carriers — and European airlines flying to or from Europe. It was adopted in 2005; since then, similar rules have been extended to passengers traveling within Europe by rail, ship or bus.
5 In theory, the law gives travelers greater protection in Europe than in the United States. In practice, airlines on both sides of the Atlantic have resisted paying some of these benefits, and many passengers do not even know these rights exist. The e-mails British Airways sent me didn’t mention compensation, and neither did the agent I spoke with. I knew about the law so I found the information on the airline’s Internet site. But the claims process was easy, and British Airways paid quickly.
6 “You’re lucky you got your money,” said Dale Kidd, a spokesman for the European Commission. “Generally, it depends on the airline, but some are better than others at paying claims.” So which airlines are the worst offenders? “I’d prefer not to do naming and shaming,” Mr. Kidd said. “It depends a lot on the persistence of the victim making the claim.”
7 One reason airlines have resisted this regulation is disagreement over who should be responsible for stranded travelers when major disruptions occur — like the volcanic ash cloud that caused more than 100,000 flight cancellations in Europe in 2010. “The ash cloud went on for eight or nine days, so it’s probably unreasonable to expect a carrier to put you up at the Hilton for that length of time,” Mr. Kidd conceded. Indeed, the airline industry says carriers lost nearly $2 billion because of the cloud, including expenses for hotel bills, although some airlines refused to pay these claims.

Adapted from The International Herald Tribune, August 31 – September 1, 2013.

AIRLINE COMPENSATION

By Susan Stellin

1 The day I was supposed to fly from London to Newark this spring, British Airways sent an e-mail saying the flight had been canceled. When I called to rebook, the British Airways agent offered a flight two hours earlier, which meant my boyfriend and I had to drop everything and race to Heathrow. The payoff came a month later, when the airline sent a check for $787 (300 euros each), compensation for our inconvenience.
2 Travelers on flights that are canceled or delayed must often accept whatever rebooking an airline offers, even if it means getting stranded at an airport for days. In the United States airlines aren’t required to compensate passengers on delayed or canceled flights, but it’s a different story in Europe. The payment that my boyfriend and I received was required by the European Union’s passenger rights law, EC 261, which obligates airlines to pay for a hotel room and meals if travelers are stranded because of a cancellation or delay.
3 If the problem is the airline’s fault — for instance, our cancellation was due to a malfunctioning plane — the carrier is supposed to compensate passengers up to 600 euros, based on the length of the flight and how long you’re delayed. I was surprised that we qualified since we actually got an earlier flight, but the law covers situations when passengers have little advance notice and have to change their plans.
4 EC 261 applies to any airline departing from the European Union — including American carriers — and European airlines flying to or from Europe. It was adopted in 2005; since then, similar rules have been extended to passengers traveling within Europe by rail, ship or bus.
5 In theory, the law gives travelers greater protection in Europe than in the United States. In practice, airlines on both sides of the Atlantic have resisted paying some of these benefits, and many passengers do not even know these rights exist. The e-mails British Airways sent me didn’t mention compensation, and neither did the agent I spoke with. I knew about the law so I found the information on the airline’s Internet site. But the claims process was easy, and British Airways paid quickly.
6 “You’re lucky you got your money,” said Dale Kidd, a spokesman for the European Commission. “Generally, it depends on the airline, but some are better than others at paying claims.” So which airlines are the worst offenders? “I’d prefer not to do naming and shaming,” Mr. Kidd said. “It depends a lot on the persistence of the victim making the claim.”
7 One reason airlines have resisted this regulation is disagreement over who should be responsible for stranded travelers when major disruptions occur — like the volcanic ash cloud that caused more than 100,000 flight cancellations in Europe in 2010. “The ash cloud went on for eight or nine days, so it’s probably unreasonable to expect a carrier to put you up at the Hilton for that length of time,” Mr. Kidd conceded. Indeed, the airline industry says carriers lost nearly $2 billion because of the cloud, including expenses for hotel bills, although some airlines refused to pay these claims.

Adapted from The International Herald Tribune, August 31 – September 1, 2013.

AIRLINE COMPENSATION

By Susan Stellin

1 The day I was supposed to fly from London to Newark this spring, British Airways sent an e-mail saying the flight had been canceled. When I called to rebook, the British Airways agent offered a flight two hours earlier, which meant my boyfriend and I had to drop everything and race to Heathrow. The payoff came a month later, when the airline sent a check for $787 (300 euros each), compensation for our inconvenience.
2 Travelers on flights that are canceled or delayed must often accept whatever rebooking an airline offers, even if it means getting stranded at an airport for days. In the United States airlines aren’t required to compensate passengers on delayed or canceled flights, but it’s a different story in Europe. The payment that my boyfriend and I received was required by the European Union’s passenger rights law, EC 261, which obligates airlines to pay for a hotel room and meals if travelers are stranded because of a cancellation or delay.
3 If the problem is the airline’s fault — for instance, our cancellation was due to a malfunctioning plane — the carrier is supposed to compensate passengers up to 600 euros, based on the length of the flight and how long you’re delayed. I was surprised that we qualified since we actually got an earlier flight, but the law covers situations when passengers have little advance notice and have to change their plans.
4 EC 261 applies to any airline departing from the European Union — including American carriers — and European airlines flying to or from Europe. It was adopted in 2005; since then, similar rules have been extended to passengers traveling within Europe by rail, ship or bus.
5 In theory, the law gives travelers greater protection in Europe than in the United States. In practice, airlines on both sides of the Atlantic have resisted paying some of these benefits, and many passengers do not even know these rights exist. The e-mails British Airways sent me didn’t mention compensation, and neither did the agent I spoke with. I knew about the law so I found the information on the airline’s Internet site. But the claims process was easy, and British Airways paid quickly.
6 “You’re lucky you got your money,” said Dale Kidd, a spokesman for the European Commission. “Generally, it depends on the airline, but some are better than others at paying claims.” So which airlines are the worst offenders? “I’d prefer not to do naming and shaming,” Mr. Kidd said. “It depends a lot on the persistence of the victim making the claim.”
7 One reason airlines have resisted this regulation is disagreement over who should be responsible for stranded travelers when major disruptions occur — like the volcanic ash cloud that caused more than 100,000 flight cancellations in Europe in 2010. “The ash cloud went on for eight or nine days, so it’s probably unreasonable to expect a carrier to put you up at the Hilton for that length of time,” Mr. Kidd conceded. Indeed, the airline industry says carriers lost nearly $2 billion because of the cloud, including expenses for hotel bills, although some airlines refused to pay these claims.

Adapted from The International Herald Tribune, August 31 – September 1, 2013.

AIRLINE COMPENSATION

By Susan Stellin

1 The day I was supposed to fly from London to Newark this spring, British Airways sent an e-mail saying the flight had been canceled. When I called to rebook, the British Airways agent offered a flight two hours earlier, which meant my boyfriend and I had to drop everything and race to Heathrow. The payoff came a month later, when the airline sent a check for $787 (300 euros each), compensation for our inconvenience.
2 Travelers on flights that are canceled or delayed must often accept whatever rebooking an airline offers, even if it means getting stranded at an airport for days. In the United States airlines aren’t required to compensate passengers on delayed or canceled flights, but it’s a different story in Europe. The payment that my boyfriend and I received was required by the European Union’s passenger rights law, EC 261, which obligates airlines to pay for a hotel room and meals if travelers are stranded because of a cancellation or delay.
3 If the problem is the airline’s fault — for instance, our cancellation was due to a malfunctioning plane — the carrier is supposed to compensate passengers up to 600 euros, based on the length of the flight and how long you’re delayed. I was surprised that we qualified since we actually got an earlier flight, but the law covers situations when passengers have little advance notice and have to change their plans.
4 EC 261 applies to any airline departing from the European Union — including American carriers — and European airlines flying to or from Europe. It was adopted in 2005; since then, similar rules have been extended to passengers traveling within Europe by rail, ship or bus.
5 In theory, the law gives travelers greater protection in Europe than in the United States. In practice, airlines on both sides of the Atlantic have resisted paying some of these benefits, and many passengers do not even know these rights exist. The e-mails British Airways sent me didn’t mention compensation, and neither did the agent I spoke with. I knew about the law so I found the information on the airline’s Internet site. But the claims process was easy, and British Airways paid quickly.
6 “You’re lucky you got your money,” said Dale Kidd, a spokesman for the European Commission. “Generally, it depends on the airline, but some are better than others at paying claims.” So which airlines are the worst offenders? “I’d prefer not to do naming and shaming,” Mr. Kidd said. “It depends a lot on the persistence of the victim making the claim.”
7 One reason airlines have resisted this regulation is disagreement over who should be responsible for stranded travelers when major disruptions occur — like the volcanic ash cloud that caused more than 100,000 flight cancellations in Europe in 2010. “The ash cloud went on for eight or nine days, so it’s probably unreasonable to expect a carrier to put you up at the Hilton for that length of time,” Mr. Kidd conceded. Indeed, the airline industry says carriers lost nearly $2 billion because of the cloud, including expenses for hotel bills, although some airlines refused to pay these claims.

Adapted from The International Herald Tribune, August 31 – September 1, 2013.

AIRLINE COMPENSATION

By Susan Stellin

1 The day I was supposed to fly from London to Newark this spring, British Airways sent an e-mail saying the flight had been canceled. When I called to rebook, the British Airways agent offered a flight two hours earlier, which meant my boyfriend and I had to drop everything and race to Heathrow. The payoff came a month later, when the airline sent a check for $787 (300 euros each), compensation for our inconvenience.
2 Travelers on flights that are canceled or delayed must often accept whatever rebooking an airline offers, even if it means getting stranded at an airport for days. In the United States airlines aren’t required to compensate passengers on delayed or canceled flights, but it’s a different story in Europe. The payment that my boyfriend and I received was required by the European Union’s passenger rights law, EC 261, which obligates airlines to pay for a hotel room and meals if travelers are stranded because of a cancellation or delay.
3 If the problem is the airline’s fault — for instance, our cancellation was due to a malfunctioning plane — the carrier is supposed to compensate passengers up to 600 euros, based on the length of the flight and how long you’re delayed. I was surprised that we qualified since we actually got an earlier flight, but the law covers situations when passengers have little advance notice and have to change their plans.
4 EC 261 applies to any airline departing from the European Union — including American carriers — and European airlines flying to or from Europe. It was adopted in 2005; since then, similar rules have been extended to passengers traveling within Europe by rail, ship or bus.
5 In theory, the law gives travelers greater protection in Europe than in the United States. In practice, airlines on both sides of the Atlantic have resisted paying some of these benefits, and many passengers do not even know these rights exist. The e-mails British Airways sent me didn’t mention compensation, and neither did the agent I spoke with. I knew about the law so I found the information on the airline’s Internet site. But the claims process was easy, and British Airways paid quickly.
6 “You’re lucky you got your money,” said Dale Kidd, a spokesman for the European Commission. “Generally, it depends on the airline, but some are better than others at paying claims.” So which airlines are the worst offenders? “I’d prefer not to do naming and shaming,” Mr. Kidd said. “It depends a lot on the persistence of the victim making the claim.”
7 One reason airlines have resisted this regulation is disagreement over who should be responsible for stranded travelers when major disruptions occur — like the volcanic ash cloud that caused more than 100,000 flight cancellations in Europe in 2010. “The ash cloud went on for eight or nine days, so it’s probably unreasonable to expect a carrier to put you up at the Hilton for that length of time,” Mr. Kidd conceded. Indeed, the airline industry says carriers lost nearly $2 billion because of the cloud, including expenses for hotel bills, although some airlines refused to pay these claims.

Adapted from The International Herald Tribune, August 31 – September 1, 2013.

AIRLINE COMPENSATION

By Susan Stellin

1 The day I was supposed to fly from London to Newark this spring, British Airways sent an e-mail saying the flight had been canceled. When I called to rebook, the British Airways agent offered a flight two hours earlier, which meant my boyfriend and I had to drop everything and race to Heathrow. The payoff came a month later, when the airline sent a check for $787 (300 euros each), compensation for our inconvenience.
2 Travelers on flights that are canceled or delayed must often accept whatever rebooking an airline offers, even if it means getting stranded at an airport for days. In the United States airlines aren’t required to compensate passengers on delayed or canceled flights, but it’s a different story in Europe. The payment that my boyfriend and I received was required by the European Union’s passenger rights law, EC 261, which obligates airlines to pay for a hotel room and meals if travelers are stranded because of a cancellation or delay.
3 If the problem is the airline’s fault — for instance, our cancellation was due to a malfunctioning plane — the carrier is supposed to compensate passengers up to 600 euros, based on the length of the flight and how long you’re delayed. I was surprised that we qualified since we actually got an earlier flight, but the law covers situations when passengers have little advance notice and have to change their plans.
4 EC 261 applies to any airline departing from the European Union — including American carriers — and European airlines flying to or from Europe. It was adopted in 2005; since then, similar rules have been extended to passengers traveling within Europe by rail, ship or bus.
5 In theory, the law gives travelers greater protection in Europe than in the United States. In practice, airlines on both sides of the Atlantic have resisted paying some of these benefits, and many passengers do not even know these rights exist. The e-mails British Airways sent me didn’t mention compensation, and neither did the agent I spoke with. I knew about the law so I found the information on the airline’s Internet site. But the claims process was easy, and British Airways paid quickly.
6 “You’re lucky you got your money,” said Dale Kidd, a spokesman for the European Commission. “Generally, it depends on the airline, but some are better than others at paying claims.” So which airlines are the worst offenders? “I’d prefer not to do naming and shaming,” Mr. Kidd said. “It depends a lot on the persistence of the victim making the claim.”
7 One reason airlines have resisted this regulation is disagreement over who should be responsible for stranded travelers when major disruptions occur — like the volcanic ash cloud that caused more than 100,000 flight cancellations in Europe in 2010. “The ash cloud went on for eight or nine days, so it’s probably unreasonable to expect a carrier to put you up at the Hilton for that length of time,” Mr. Kidd conceded. Indeed, the airline industry says carriers lost nearly $2 billion because of the cloud, including expenses for hotel bills, although some airlines refused to pay these claims.

Adapted from The International Herald Tribune, August 31 – September 1, 2013.

Life of a Nantucket Surgeon

By Tara Parker-Pope
July 27, 2012

In her new book, “Island Practice”, the New York Times reporter Pam Belluck tells the story of Dr. Timothy Lepore, a quirky 67-year-old physician who for the past 30 years has been the only surgeon working on the island of Nantucket. But Dr. Lepore is no ordinary surgeon. Life on an island, even one that has become a summer playground to the rich and famous, requires a certain amount of resourcefulness and flexibility. Over the years Dr. Lepore has taken it upon himself to deliver whatever type of medical care his island inhabitants need, often challenging conventional notions of medicine and redefining what it means to be a healer. While his surgical skills have been used for minor repairs and lifesaving procedures, he often works as a general practitioner, treating everyday ailments. Distraught island residents also call on him for counseling and comfort, and he even steps into the role of veterinarian when needed.
I recently spoke with Ms. Belluck about the time she spent with Dr. Lepore. Here’s part of our conversation.

• I think of Nantucket as a posh summer tourist destination. Were you surprised to find such a quirky character there?
I thought of it as this rich summer haven, but there is this whole year-round population that is really interesting and diverse and has to scrabble for a living. Even the hardship was surprising. You think any place is accessible, but there are a lot of times where you cannot get on or off the island, and you can’t get what you need. Even though they have fast ferries and airplanes now, you’re still at the mercy of the elements, and that creates a lot of drama.

• What kinds of challenges has Dr. Lepore faced?
Part of it is the fact that as the only surgeon, you kind of need to do everything, and you may not know how to do something. There was a guy who came home and had forgotten to pick up potatoes, and his wife stabbed him in the heart. It’s the kind of stab wound that only 10 percent of patients make it to the hospital alive, and 1 percent will survive. Dr. Lepore had never seen anything like this before, but there was no time to get the guy off the island. So he had to reach in and get the heart started. There wasn’t the right equipment to sew him up, and they had only six units of blood, which is not that much. But he’s an encyclopedia of arcane facts, and he remembered that in the 1800s they used black silk thread for this kind of injury. They found some black silk thread, and he managed to close this guy’s heart and get it beating again. The guy survived and became a marathon runner. There is a field hospital-type feeling to it. You’re not under fire, but there is making do with what you have and flying by the seat of your pants. Often the weather is bad, and he has never done it before, but he just has to do it.

• Does he make a good living? Does he take insurance?
He takes insurance, but he also takes people who can’t pay at all. He will even allow people to pay him in kind. One of the undercurrents of the book is that his hospital on Nantucket is now run by Partners Health Care, the big health care corporation that runs Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. They have instituted some new systems, but he flouts many of them. He says, “Nobody is going to manage my time. Nobody is going to tell me what to do.” They can’t really complain because they need him.

(www.nytimes.com. Adaptado.)

Life of a Nantucket Surgeon

By Tara Parker-Pope
July 27, 2012

In her new book, “Island Practice”, the New York Times reporter Pam Belluck tells the story of Dr. Timothy Lepore, a quirky 67-year-old physician who for the past 30 years has been the only surgeon working on the island of Nantucket. But Dr. Lepore is no ordinary surgeon. Life on an island, even one that has become a summer playground to the rich and famous, requires a certain amount of resourcefulness and flexibility. Over the years Dr. Lepore has taken it upon himself to deliver whatever type of medical care his island inhabitants need, often challenging conventional notions of medicine and redefining what it means to be a healer. While his surgical skills have been used for minor repairs and lifesaving procedures, he often works as a general practitioner, treating everyday ailments. Distraught island residents also call on him for counseling and comfort, and he even steps into the role of veterinarian when needed.
I recently spoke with Ms. Belluck about the time she spent with Dr. Lepore. Here’s part of our conversation.

• I think of Nantucket as a posh summer tourist destination. Were you surprised to find such a quirky character there?
I thought of it as this rich summer haven, but there is this whole year-round population that is really interesting and diverse and has to scrabble for a living. Even the hardship was surprising. You think any place is accessible, but there are a lot of times where you cannot get on or off the island, and you can’t get what you need. Even though they have fast ferries and airplanes now, you’re still at the mercy of the elements, and that creates a lot of drama.

• What kinds of challenges has Dr. Lepore faced?
Part of it is the fact that as the only surgeon, you kind of need to do everything, and you may not know how to do something. There was a guy who came home and had forgotten to pick up potatoes, and his wife stabbed him in the heart. It’s the kind of stab wound that only 10 percent of patients make it to the hospital alive, and 1 percent will survive. Dr. Lepore had never seen anything like this before, but there was no time to get the guy off the island. So he had to reach in and get the heart started. There wasn’t the right equipment to sew him up, and they had only six units of blood, which is not that much. But he’s an encyclopedia of arcane facts, and he remembered that in the 1800s they used black silk thread for this kind of injury. They found some black silk thread, and he managed to close this guy’s heart and get it beating again. The guy survived and became a marathon runner. There is a field hospital-type feeling to it. You’re not under fire, but there is making do with what you have and flying by the seat of your pants. Often the weather is bad, and he has never done it before, but he just has to do it.

• Does he make a good living? Does he take insurance?
He takes insurance, but he also takes people who can’t pay at all. He will even allow people to pay him in kind. One of the undercurrents of the book is that his hospital on Nantucket is now run by Partners Health Care, the big health care corporation that runs Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. They have instituted some new systems, but he flouts many of them. He says, “Nobody is going to manage my time. Nobody is going to tell me what to do.” They can’t really complain because they need him.

(www.nytimes.com. Adaptado.)

Life of a Nantucket Surgeon

By Tara Parker-Pope
July 27, 2012

In her new book, “Island Practice”, the New York Times reporter Pam Belluck tells the story of Dr. Timothy Lepore, a quirky 67-year-old physician who for the past 30 years has been the only surgeon working on the island of Nantucket. But Dr. Lepore is no ordinary surgeon. Life on an island, even one that has become a summer playground to the rich and famous, requires a certain amount of resourcefulness and flexibility. Over the years Dr. Lepore has taken it upon himself to deliver whatever type of medical care his island inhabitants need, often challenging conventional notions of medicine and redefining what it means to be a healer. While his surgical skills have been used for minor repairs and lifesaving procedures, he often works as a general practitioner, treating everyday ailments. Distraught island residents also call on him for counseling and comfort, and he even steps into the role of veterinarian when needed.
I recently spoke with Ms. Belluck about the time she spent with Dr. Lepore. Here’s part of our conversation.

• I think of Nantucket as a posh summer tourist destination. Were you surprised to find such a quirky character there?
I thought of it as this rich summer haven, but there is this whole year-round population that is really interesting and diverse and has to scrabble for a living. Even the hardship was surprising. You think any place is accessible, but there are a lot of times where you cannot get on or off the island, and you can’t get what you need. Even though they have fast ferries and airplanes now, you’re still at the mercy of the elements, and that creates a lot of drama.

• What kinds of challenges has Dr. Lepore faced?
Part of it is the fact that as the only surgeon, you kind of need to do everything, and you may not know how to do something. There was a guy who came home and had forgotten to pick up potatoes, and his wife stabbed him in the heart. It’s the kind of stab wound that only 10 percent of patients make it to the hospital alive, and 1 percent will survive. Dr. Lepore had never seen anything like this before, but there was no time to get the guy off the island. So he had to reach in and get the heart started. There wasn’t the right equipment to sew him up, and they had only six units of blood, which is not that much. But he’s an encyclopedia of arcane facts, and he remembered that in the 1800s they used black silk thread for this kind of injury. They found some black silk thread, and he managed to close this guy’s heart and get it beating again. The guy survived and became a marathon runner. There is a field hospital-type feeling to it. You’re not under fire, but there is making do with what you have and flying by the seat of your pants. Often the weather is bad, and he has never done it before, but he just has to do it.

• Does he make a good living? Does he take insurance?
He takes insurance, but he also takes people who can’t pay at all. He will even allow people to pay him in kind. One of the undercurrents of the book is that his hospital on Nantucket is now run by Partners Health Care, the big health care corporation that runs Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. They have instituted some new systems, but he flouts many of them. He says, “Nobody is going to manage my time. Nobody is going to tell me what to do.” They can’t really complain because they need him.

(www.nytimes.com. Adaptado.)

Work after eight months of pregnancy is as
harmful as smoking, study finds

Conal Urquhart and agencies
July 28, 2012
Working after eight months of pregnancy is as harmful for babies as smoking, according to a new study. Women who worked after they were eight months pregnant had babies on average around 230g lighter than those who stopped work between six and eight months.
The University of Essex research – which drew on data from three major studies, two in the UK and one in the US – found the effect of continuing to work during the late stages of pregnancy was equal to that of smoking while pregnant. Babies whose mothers worked or smoked throughout pregnancy grew more slowly in the womb.
Past research has shown babies with low birth weights are at higher risk of poor health and slow development, and may suffer from a variety of problems later in life. Stopping work early in pregnancy was particularly beneficial for women with lower levels of education, the study found – suggesting that the effect of working during pregnancy was possibly more marked for those doing physically demanding work. The birth weight of babies born to mothers under the age of 24 was not affected by them continuing to work, but in older mothers the effect was more significant.
The researchers identified 1,339 children whose mothers were part of the British Household Panel Survey, which was conducted between 1991 and 2005, and for whom data was available. A further sample of 17,483 women who gave birth in 2000 or 2001 and who took part in the Millennium Cohort Study was also examined and showed similar results, along with 12,166 from the National Survey of Family Growth, relating to births in the US between the early 1970s and 1995.
One of the authors of the study, Prof. Marco Francesconi, said the government should consider incentives employers to offer more flexible maternity leave to 42 women who might need a break before, 43 after, their babies were born. He said: “We know low birth weight is a predictor of many things that happen later, including lower chances of completing school successfully, lower wages and higher mortality. We need to think seriously about parental leave, because – as this study suggests – the possible benefits of taking leave flexibly before the birth 44 quite high.”
The study also suggests British women may be working for 45 now during pregnancy. While 16% of mothers questioned by the British Household Panel Study, which went as far back as 1991, worked up to one month before the birth, the figure was 30% in the Millennium Cohort Study, whose subjects were born in 2000 and 2001

(www.guardian.co.uk)

Work after eight months of pregnancy is as
harmful as smoking, study finds

Conal Urquhart and agencies
July 28, 2012
Working after eight months of pregnancy is as harmful for babies as smoking, according to a new study. Women who worked after they were eight months pregnant had babies on average around 230g lighter than those who stopped work between six and eight months.
The University of Essex research – which drew on data from three major studies, two in the UK and one in the US – found the effect of continuing to work during the late stages of pregnancy was equal to that of smoking while pregnant. Babies whose mothers worked or smoked throughout pregnancy grew more slowly in the womb.
Past research has shown babies with low birth weights are at higher risk of poor health and slow development, and may suffer from a variety of problems later in life. Stopping work early in pregnancy was particularly beneficial for women with lower levels of education, the study found – suggesting that the effect of working during pregnancy was possibly more marked for those doing physically demanding work. The birth weight of babies born to mothers under the age of 24 was not affected by them continuing to work, but in older mothers the effect was more significant.
The researchers identified 1,339 children whose mothers were part of the British Household Panel Survey, which was conducted between 1991 and 2005, and for whom data was available. A further sample of 17,483 women who gave birth in 2000 or 2001 and who took part in the Millennium Cohort Study was also examined and showed similar results, along with 12,166 from the National Survey of Family Growth, relating to births in the US between the early 1970s and 1995.
One of the authors of the study, Prof. Marco Francesconi, said the government should consider incentives employers to offer more flexible maternity leave to 42 women who might need a break before, 43 after, their babies were born. He said: “We know low birth weight is a predictor of many things that happen later, including lower chances of completing school successfully, lower wages and higher mortality. We need to think seriously about parental leave, because – as this study suggests – the possible benefits of taking leave flexibly before the birth 44 quite high.”
The study also suggests British women may be working for 45 now during pregnancy. While 16% of mothers questioned by the British Household Panel Study, which went as far back as 1991, worked up to one month before the birth, the figure was 30% in the Millennium Cohort Study, whose subjects were born in 2000 and 2001

(www.guardian.co.uk)

Work after eight months of pregnancy is as
harmful as smoking, study finds

Conal Urquhart and agencies
July 28, 2012
Working after eight months of pregnancy is as harmful for babies as smoking, according to a new study. Women who worked after they were eight months pregnant had babies on average around 230g lighter than those who stopped work between six and eight months.
The University of Essex research – which drew on data from three major studies, two in the UK and one in the US – found the effect of continuing to work during the late stages of pregnancy was equal to that of smoking while pregnant. Babies whose mothers worked or smoked throughout pregnancy grew more slowly in the womb.
Past research has shown babies with low birth weights are at higher risk of poor health and slow development, and may suffer from a variety of problems later in life. Stopping work early in pregnancy was particularly beneficial for women with lower levels of education, the study found – suggesting that the effect of working during pregnancy was possibly more marked for those doing physically demanding work. The birth weight of babies born to mothers under the age of 24 was not affected by them continuing to work, but in older mothers the effect was more significant.
The researchers identified 1,339 children whose mothers were part of the British Household Panel Survey, which was conducted between 1991 and 2005, and for whom data was available. A further sample of 17,483 women who gave birth in 2000 or 2001 and who took part in the Millennium Cohort Study was also examined and showed similar results, along with 12,166 from the National Survey of Family Growth, relating to births in the US between the early 1970s and 1995.
One of the authors of the study, Prof. Marco Francesconi, said the government should consider incentives employers to offer more flexible maternity leave to 42 women who might need a break before, 43 after, their babies were born. He said: “We know low birth weight is a predictor of many things that happen later, including lower chances of completing school successfully, lower wages and higher mortality. We need to think seriously about parental leave, because – as this study suggests – the possible benefits of taking leave flexibly before the birth 44 quite high.”
The study also suggests British women may be working for 45 now during pregnancy. While 16% of mothers questioned by the British Household Panel Study, which went as far back as 1991, worked up to one month before the birth, the figure was 30% in the Millennium Cohort Study, whose subjects were born in 2000 and 2001

(www.guardian.co.uk)

Work after eight months of pregnancy is as
harmful as smoking, study finds

Conal Urquhart and agencies
July 28, 2012
Working after eight months of pregnancy is as harmful for babies as smoking, according to a new study. Women who worked after they were eight months pregnant had babies on average around 230g lighter than those who stopped work between six and eight months.
The University of Essex research – which drew on data from three major studies, two in the UK and one in the US – found the effect of continuing to work during the late stages of pregnancy was equal to that of smoking while pregnant. Babies whose mothers worked or smoked throughout pregnancy grew more slowly in the womb.
Past research has shown babies with low birth weights are at higher risk of poor health and slow development, and may suffer from a variety of problems later in life. Stopping work early in pregnancy was particularly beneficial for women with lower levels of education, the study found – suggesting that the effect of working during pregnancy was possibly more marked for those doing physically demanding work. The birth weight of babies born to mothers under the age of 24 was not affected by them continuing to work, but in older mothers the effect was more significant.
The researchers identified 1,339 children whose mothers were part of the British Household Panel Survey, which was conducted between 1991 and 2005, and for whom data was available. A further sample of 17,483 women who gave birth in 2000 or 2001 and who took part in the Millennium Cohort Study was also examined and showed similar results, along with 12,166 from the National Survey of Family Growth, relating to births in the US between the early 1970s and 1995.
One of the authors of the study, Prof. Marco Francesconi, said the government should consider incentives employers to offer more flexible maternity leave to 42 women who might need a break before, 43 after, their babies were born. He said: “We know low birth weight is a predictor of many things that happen later, including lower chances of completing school successfully, lower wages and higher mortality. We need to think seriously about parental leave, because – as this study suggests – the possible benefits of taking leave flexibly before the birth 44 quite high.”
The study also suggests British women may be working for 45 now during pregnancy. While 16% of mothers questioned by the British Household Panel Study, which went as far back as 1991, worked up to one month before the birth, the figure was 30% in the Millennium Cohort Study, whose subjects were born in 2000 and 2001

(www.guardian.co.uk)

Work after eight months of pregnancy is as
harmful as smoking, study finds

Conal Urquhart and agencies
July 28, 2012
Working after eight months of pregnancy is as harmful for babies as smoking, according to a new study. Women who worked after they were eight months pregnant had babies on average around 230g lighter than those who stopped work between six and eight months.
The University of Essex research – which drew on data from three major studies, two in the UK and one in the US – found the effect of continuing to work during the late stages of pregnancy was equal to that of smoking while pregnant. Babies whose mothers worked or smoked throughout pregnancy grew more slowly in the womb.
Past research has shown babies with low birth weights are at higher risk of poor health and slow development, and may suffer from a variety of problems later in life. Stopping work early in pregnancy was particularly beneficial for women with lower levels of education, the study found – suggesting that the effect of working during pregnancy was possibly more marked for those doing physically demanding work. The birth weight of babies born to mothers under the age of 24 was not affected by them continuing to work, but in older mothers the effect was more significant.
The researchers identified 1,339 children whose mothers were part of the British Household Panel Survey, which was conducted between 1991 and 2005, and for whom data was available. A further sample of 17,483 women who gave birth in 2000 or 2001 and who took part in the Millennium Cohort Study was also examined and showed similar results, along with 12,166 from the National Survey of Family Growth, relating to births in the US between the early 1970s and 1995.
One of the authors of the study, Prof. Marco Francesconi, said the government should consider incentives employers to offer more flexible maternity leave to 42 women who might need a break before, 43 after, their babies were born. He said: “We know low birth weight is a predictor of many things that happen later, including lower chances of completing school successfully, lower wages and higher mortality. We need to think seriously about parental leave, because – as this study suggests – the possible benefits of taking leave flexibly before the birth 44 quite high.”
The study also suggests British women may be working for 45 now during pregnancy. While 16% of mothers questioned by the British Household Panel Study, which went as far back as 1991, worked up to one month before the birth, the figure was 30% in the Millennium Cohort Study, whose subjects were born in 2000 and 2001

(www.guardian.co.uk)

Work after eight months of pregnancy is as
harmful as smoking, study finds

Conal Urquhart and agencies
July 28, 2012
Working after eight months of pregnancy is as harmful for babies as smoking, according to a new study. Women who worked after they were eight months pregnant had babies on average around 230g lighter than those who stopped work between six and eight months.
The University of Essex research – which drew on data from three major studies, two in the UK and one in the US – found the effect of continuing to work during the late stages of pregnancy was equal to that of smoking while pregnant. Babies whose mothers worked or smoked throughout pregnancy grew more slowly in the womb.
Past research has shown babies with low birth weights are at higher risk of poor health and slow development, and may suffer from a variety of problems later in life. Stopping work early in pregnancy was particularly beneficial for women with lower levels of education, the study found – suggesting that the effect of working during pregnancy was possibly more marked for those doing physically demanding work. The birth weight of babies born to mothers under the age of 24 was not affected by them continuing to work, but in older mothers the effect was more significant.
The researchers identified 1,339 children whose mothers were part of the British Household Panel Survey, which was conducted between 1991 and 2005, and for whom data was available. A further sample of 17,483 women who gave birth in 2000 or 2001 and who took part in the Millennium Cohort Study was also examined and showed similar results, along with 12,166 from the National Survey of Family Growth, relating to births in the US between the early 1970s and 1995.
One of the authors of the study, Prof. Marco Francesconi, said the government should consider incentives employers to offer more flexible maternity leave to 42 women who might need a break before, 43 after, their babies were born. He said: “We know low birth weight is a predictor of many things that happen later, including lower chances of completing school successfully, lower wages and higher mortality. We need to think seriously about parental leave, because – as this study suggests – the possible benefits of taking leave flexibly before the birth 44 quite high.”
The study also suggests British women may be working for 45 now during pregnancy. While 16% of mothers questioned by the British Household Panel Study, which went as far back as 1991, worked up to one month before the birth, the figure was 30% in the Millennium Cohort Study, whose subjects were born in 2000 and 2001

(www.guardian.co.uk)

Time was, advertising was a relatively simple undertaking: buy some print space and airtime, create the spots, and blast them at a captive audience. Today it’s chaos: while passive viewers still exist, mostly we pick and choose what to consume, ignoring ads with a touch of the DVR remote. Ads are forced to become more like content, and the best aim to engage consumers so much that they pass the material on to friends – by email, Twitter, Facebook – who will pass it on to friends, who will… you get the picture. In the industry, “viral” has become a usefully vague way to describe any campaign that spreads from person to person, acquiring its own momentum.
It’s not that online advertising has eclipsed TV, but it has become its full partner – and in many ways the more substantive one, a medium in which the audience must be earned, not simply bought.

Time was, advertising was a relatively simple undertaking: buy some print space and airtime, create the spots, and blast them at a captive audience. Today it’s chaos: while passive viewers still exist, mostly we pick and choose what to consume, ignoring ads with a touch of the DVR remote. Ads are forced to become more like content, and the best aim to engage consumers so much that they pass the material on to friends – by email, Twitter, Facebook – who will pass it on to friends, who will… you get the picture. In the industry, “viral” has become a usefully vague way to describe any campaign that spreads from person to person, acquiring its own momentum.
It’s not that online advertising has eclipsed TV, but it has become its full partner – and in many ways the more substantive one, a medium in which the audience must be earned, not simply bought.

Time was, advertising was a relatively simple undertaking: buy some print space and airtime, create the spots, and blast them at a captive audience. Today it’s chaos: while passive viewers still exist, mostly we pick and choose what to consume, ignoring ads with a touch of the DVR remote. Ads are forced to become more like content, and the best aim to engage consumers so much that they pass the material on to friends – by email, Twitter, Facebook – who will pass it on to friends, who will… you get the picture. In the industry, “viral” has become a usefully vague way to describe any campaign that spreads from person to person, acquiring its own momentum.
It’s not that online advertising has eclipsed TV, but it has become its full partner – and in many ways the more substantive one, a medium in which the audience must be earned, not simply bought.

Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life is Adam Phillips's 17th book and is a characteristic blend of literary criticism and philosophical reflection packaged around a central idea. The theme here is missed opportunities, roads not taken, alternative versions of our lives and ourselves, all of which, Phillips argues, exert a powerful hold over our imaginations. Using a series of examples and close readings of authors including Philip Larkin and Shakespeare, the book suggests that a broader understanding of life's inevitable disappointments and thwarted desires can enable us to live fuller, richer lives. Good things come to those who wait. Does he see himself as a champion of frustration? “I'm not on the side of frustration exactly, so much as the idea that one has to be able to bear frustration in order for satisfaction to be realistic. I'm interested in how the culture of consumer capitalism depends on the idea that we can't bear frustration, so that every time we feel a bit restless or bored or irritable, we eat, or we shop.” theguardian

Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life is Adam Phillips's 17th book and is a characteristic blend of literary criticism and philosophical reflection packaged around a central idea. The theme here is missed opportunities, roads not taken, alternative versions of our lives and ourselves, all of which, Phillips argues, exert a powerful hold over our imaginations. Using a series of examples and close readings of authors including Philip Larkin and Shakespeare, the book suggests that a broader understanding of life's inevitable disappointments and thwarted desires can enable us to live fuller, richer lives. Good things come to those who wait. Does he see himself as a champion of frustration? “I'm not on the side of frustration exactly, so much as the idea that one has to be able to bear frustration in order for satisfaction to be realistic. I'm interested in how the culture of consumer capitalism depends on the idea that we can't bear frustration, so that every time we feel a bit restless or bored or irritable, we eat, or we shop.”

JUST 10 YEARS INTO A NEW CENTURY, MORE THAN TWO-thirds of the country sees the past decade as a period of decline for the U.S., according to a new TIME/Aspen Ideas Festival poll that probed Americans on the decade since the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001. Osama bin Laden is dead and al-Qaeda seriously weakened, but the impact of the 9/11 attacks and the decisions that followed have, in the view of most Americans, put the U.S. in a tailspin that the country has been unable to shake during two administrations and almost 10 years of trying.
ACCORDING TO THE POLL, ONLY 6% OF MORE THAN 2,000 Americans believe the country has completely recovered from the events of 9/11. Some of this pessimism can be tied to fears of more terrorist attacks. Despite the death of bin Laden, most Americans think another terrorist attack in the U.S. is likely.

JUST 10 YEARS INTO A NEW CENTURY, MORE THAN TWO-thirds of the country sees the past decade as a period of decline for the U.S., according to a new TIME/Aspen Ideas Festival poll that probed Americans on the decade since the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001. Osama bin Laden is dead and al-Qaeda seriously weakened, but the impact of the 9/11 attacks and the decisions that followed have, in the view of most Americans, put the U.S. in a tailspin that the country has been unable to shake during two administrations and almost 10 years of trying.
ACCORDING TO THE POLL, ONLY 6% OF MORE THAN 2,000 Americans believe the country has completely recovered from the events of 9/11. Some of this pessimism can be tied to fears of more terrorist attacks. Despite the death of bin Laden, most Americans think another terrorist attack in the U.S. is likely.

Instrução: Leia o texto para responder a questão.

How computers will soon get under our skin

By Steve Connor, Science Editor
12 August 2011

It may soon be possible to wear your computer or mobile phone under your sleeve, with the invention of an ultra-thin and flexible electronic circuit that can be stuck to the skin like a temporary tattoo. The device, which is almost invisible, can perform just as well as more conventional electronic machines but without the need for wires or bulky power supplies, scientists said. The development could mark a new era in consumer electronics. The technology could be used for applications ranging from medical diagnosis to covert military operations.
The “epidermal electronic system” relies on a highly flexible electrical circuit composed of snake-like conducting channels that can bend and stretch without affecting performance. The circuit is about the size of a postage stamp, is thinner than a human hair and sticks to the skin by natural electrostatic forces rather than glue. “We think this could be an important conceptual advance in wearable electronics, to achieve something that is almost unnoticeable to the wearer. The technology can connect you to the physical world and the cyberworld in a very natural way that feels comfortable,” said Professor Todd Coleman of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who led the research team.
A simple stick-on circuit can monitor a person’s heart rate and muscle movements as well as conventional medical monitors, but with the benefit of being weightless and almost completely undetectable. Scientists said it may also be possible to build a circuit for detecting throat movements around the larynx in order to transmit the information wirelessly as a way of recording a person’s speech, even if they are not making any discernible sounds.
Tests have already shown that such a system can be used to control a voice-activated computer game, and one suggestion is that a stick-on voicebox circuit could be used in covert police operations where it might be too dangerous to speak into a radio transmitter. “The blurring of electronics and biology is really the key point here,” said Yonggang Huang, professor of engineering at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. “All established forms of electronics are hard, rigid. Biology is soft, elastic. It’s two different worlds. This is a way to truly integrate them.”
Engineers have built test circuits mounted on a thin, rubbery substrate that adheres to the skin. The circuits have included sensors, light-emitting diodes, transistors, radio frequency capacitors, wireless antennas, conductive coils and solar cells. “We threw everything in our bag of tricks on to that platform, and then added a few other new ideas on top of those, to show that we could make it work,” said John Rogers, professor of engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a lead author of the study, published in the journal Science.

(www.independent.co.uk. Adaptado.)

Instrução: Leia o texto para responder a questão.

How computers will soon get under our skin

By Steve Connor, Science Editor
12 August 2011

It may soon be possible to wear your computer or mobile phone under your sleeve, with the invention of an ultra-thin and flexible electronic circuit that can be stuck to the skin like a temporary tattoo. The device, which is almost invisible, can perform just as well as more conventional electronic machines but without the need for wires or bulky power supplies, scientists said. The development could mark a new era in consumer electronics. The technology could be used for applications ranging from medical diagnosis to covert military operations.
The “epidermal electronic system” relies on a highly flexible electrical circuit composed of snake-like conducting channels that can bend and stretch without affecting performance. The circuit is about the size of a postage stamp, is thinner than a human hair and sticks to the skin by natural electrostatic forces rather than glue. “We think this could be an important conceptual advance in wearable electronics, to achieve something that is almost unnoticeable to the wearer. The technology can connect you to the physical world and the cyberworld in a very natural way that feels comfortable,” said Professor Todd Coleman of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who led the research team.
A simple stick-on circuit can monitor a person’s heart rate and muscle movements as well as conventional medical monitors, but with the benefit of being weightless and almost completely undetectable. Scientists said it may also be possible to build a circuit for detecting throat movements around the larynx in order to transmit the information wirelessly as a way of recording a person’s speech, even if they are not making any discernible sounds.
Tests have already shown that such a system can be used to control a voice-activated computer game, and one suggestion is that a stick-on voicebox circuit could be used in covert police operations where it might be too dangerous to speak into a radio transmitter. “The blurring of electronics and biology is really the key point here,” said Yonggang Huang, professor of engineering at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. “All established forms of electronics are hard, rigid. Biology is soft, elastic. It’s two different worlds. This is a way to truly integrate them.”
Engineers have built test circuits mounted on a thin, rubbery substrate that adheres to the skin. The circuits have included sensors, light-emitting diodes, transistors, radio frequency capacitors, wireless antennas, conductive coils and solar cells. “We threw everything in our bag of tricks on to that platform, and then added a few other new ideas on top of those, to show that we could make it work,” said John Rogers, professor of engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a lead author of the study, published in the journal Science.

(www.independent.co.uk. Adaptado.)

Instrução: Leia o texto para responder a questão.

How computers will soon get under our skin

By Steve Connor, Science Editor
12 August 2011

It may soon be possible to wear your computer or mobile phone under your sleeve, with the invention of an ultra-thin and flexible electronic circuit that can be stuck to the skin like a temporary tattoo. The device, which is almost invisible, can perform just as well as more conventional electronic machines but without the need for wires or bulky power supplies, scientists said. The development could mark a new era in consumer electronics. The technology could be used for applications ranging from medical diagnosis to covert military operations.
The “epidermal electronic system” relies on a highly flexible electrical circuit composed of snake-like conducting channels that can bend and stretch without affecting performance. The circuit is about the size of a postage stamp, is thinner than a human hair and sticks to the skin by natural electrostatic forces rather than glue. “We think this could be an important conceptual advance in wearable electronics, to achieve something that is almost unnoticeable to the wearer. The technology can connect you to the physical world and the cyberworld in a very natural way that feels comfortable,” said Professor Todd Coleman of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who led the research team.
A simple stick-on circuit can monitor a person’s heart rate and muscle movements as well as conventional medical monitors, but with the benefit of being weightless and almost completely undetectable. Scientists said it may also be possible to build a circuit for detecting throat movements around the larynx in order to transmit the information wirelessly as a way of recording a person’s speech, even if they are not making any discernible sounds.
Tests have already shown that such a system can be used to control a voice-activated computer game, and one suggestion is that a stick-on voicebox circuit could be used in covert police operations where it might be too dangerous to speak into a radio transmitter. “The blurring of electronics and biology is really the key point here,” said Yonggang Huang, professor of engineering at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. “All established forms of electronics are hard, rigid. Biology is soft, elastic. It’s two different worlds. This is a way to truly integrate them.”
Engineers have built test circuits mounted on a thin, rubbery substrate that adheres to the skin. The circuits have included sensors, light-emitting diodes, transistors, radio frequency capacitors, wireless antennas, conductive coils and solar cells. “We threw everything in our bag of tricks on to that platform, and then added a few other new ideas on top of those, to show that we could make it work,” said John Rogers, professor of engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a lead author of the study, published in the journal Science.

(www.independent.co.uk. Adaptado.)