SEARCH RESEARCH TOOLS Economist.com Choose a research tool... advanced search » Subscribe Activate Help Thursday October 12th 2006 Welcome = requires subscription My Account » Manage my newsletters LOG OUT » » PRINT EDITION Print Edition October 14th 2006 On the cover Previous print editions Subscribe America, China and Russia Oct 7th 2006 Subscribe to the print edition must all make sacrifices to Sep 30th 2006 Or buy a Web subscription for stop a nuclear arms race in Sep 23rd 2006 full access online Asia and the Middle East: Sep 16th 2006 leader Sep 9th 2006 RSS feeds Receive this page by RSS feed More print editions and covers » The world this week Politics this week Full contents Enlarge current cover Business this week Past issues/regional covers Subscribe A survey of telecoms convergence Leaders GLOBAL AGENDA Your television is ringing North Korea POLITICS THIS WEEK Who can stop him now? All things to all men BUSINESS THIS WEEK Somalia The end of the line Seeking moderates, fearing war OPINION Home and away Leaders Telecoms Letters Here we go again, sort of Tuning in to the future? Ex-communist countries WORLD Changing the rules Europe's fraying fringe United States The Americas American politics Winners and losers Asia Crash and re-boot Middle East & Africa Sources and acknowledgements Europe Britain Offer to readers Country Briefings Letters Cities Guide On the yen, Egypt, Austin, Sakhalin Island, Iraq, Business SURVEYS maglev trains, India and China, squash, Canada's native minorities, Ann Richards BUSINESS Google and YouTube Two kings get together Management Reading Business Education Special Report European television Executive Dialogue Regulation without frontiers North Korea FINANCE & ECONOMICS The nightmare comes to pass Airbus Economics Focus In place of Streiff Proliferation Economics A-Z A regime as rickety as his own India's acquisition spree SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY Circle the wagons Correction: Japan's territorial disputes Technology Quarterly Golf in America Blues on the green PEOPLE United States Obituary European airlines America's population The Italian exception BOOKS & ARTS Now we are 300,000,000 Face value Style Guide Ballot initiatives The media industry's odd man out Questions, questions MARKETS & DATA Weekly Indicators Ingenious punishments Special Report Currencies Their object all sublime Big Mac Index The Wallenbergs Wal-Mart Sweden's enduring business dynasty DIVERSIONS High risk, high reward RESEARCH TOOLS Miami Finance & Economics Culture club CLASSIFIEDS China's biggest bank Republican difficulties A dragon stirs DELIVERY OPTIONS How goes Ohio? E-mail Newsletters Buttonwood Mobile Edition Lexington Roll over RSS Feeds Waiting for the end, boys The Nobel prize for economics ONLINE FEATURES Correction: MoveOn.org A natural choice Cities Guide Visa's flotation The Americas Plastic coating Country Briefings Ecuador's elections Catastrophe insurance An enigmatic leftist rides into town Audio interviews Balmy in Bermuda Bolivia Banks and buy-outs Classifieds Losing the miners Follow the money Mexico Wine economics Chemical reaction Economist Intelligence Unit Fruity little numbers Economist Conferences Religion in Canada The World In Hedge funds Intelligent Life Coming out Back in business CFO Roll Call Economics focus European Voice Asia Home truths EuroFinance Conferences Economist Diaries and India's Special Economic Zones Business Gifts Cash cows Science & Technology The Philippines Planetary science Advertisement A troublesome priest When a world is born South-East Asia Conservation Stuck in a haze Vaccinate in the vales Kazakhstan An apple a day... Cancer therapy Re-establishing control Middle East & Africa Altruism The joy of giving Somalia Islamists half-ready for holy war Books & Arts Iraq Divisa in partes tres America's mid-term elections Fighting for votes The human cost of war in Iraq Calculating casualties New fiction: Martin Amis Comeback man Gaza One shrimp at a time Sandy Weill Big man's shoes South Africa Positive dating Hewlett-Packard Her story Diego Velázquez His unflinching eye Europe Obituary Russia Anna Politkovskaya The hardest word Central and eastern Europe Economic and Financial Indicators Shadows at Europe's heart Overview France Sound and fury Output, demand and jobs Spain Prices and wages Huddled against the masses Total tax revenues as % of GDP Belgium Right on Money and interest rates Sweden The Economist commodity price index Electric power Stockmarkets Charlemagne The brain business Trade, exchange rates and budgets General-government structural budget balance Britain National Health Service Emerging-Market Indicators Handing over control Overview Health-care performance A poor report card Bribery British Muslims Economy Deconstructing the veil Financial markets Children in care A better deal Overcrowded prisons A predictable crisis Power generation King Coal redux Bagehot An old man who's not in a hurry Articles flagged with this icon are printed only in the British edition of The Economist Advertisement Classifieds Sponsors' feature About sponsorship » Jobs Tenders Jobs Tenders Jobs Tenders Senior Forest Policy Expression of Interest Media Trainers Request for International Economic Advice to and Politics Position - Management Audit Needed Proposals: A course Technical Advisor for the European August 30, 2006 Yale Expression of Interest Media Trainers on Budget Policies GEF Protected Areas Commission (EC) University’s School of Management Audit Knight International and Investments for Biodiversity (PAB) Delegation Kigali, Forestry & Consultation Journalism Children project in Rwanda Rwanda Environm.... Company The Tim.... Fellowships now Request for UNDP seeking an Economic Advice to open to qualified Proposals: .... The Un.... the European candidates o.... Comm.... About Economist.com | About The Economist | About Global Agenda | Media Directory | Staff Books | Advertising info | Career opportunities | Contact us Copyright © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2006. All rights reserved. Advertising Info | Legal disclaimer | Accessibility | Privacy policy | Terms & Conditions | Help Produced by =ECO PDF TEAM= Thanks xxmama About sponsorship Politics this week Oct 12th 2006 From The Economist print edition North Korea claimed to have carried out a nuclear test. Russia corroborated AP the claim, and other regional powers monitored an underground explosion consistent with it. The test was condemned around the world. Japan announced harsh sanctions and America and other countries also threatened them. China, the only country thought to have significant influence with North Korea, called the test a “brazen” act; it was unclear what response it might support. See article Pakistan condemned North Korea's test as a “destabilising” act. It should know: Pakistan's inaugural nuclear tests in 1998 caused international outrage. In 2004 Abdul Qadeer Khan, the architect of Pakistan's nuclear-arms programme, admitted to having illicitly furnished North Korea, Libya and Iran with nuclear technology. The British commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan held talks with Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf about the Taliban insurgents who have killed dozens of NATO troops in recent months. Some Taliban leaders are believed to be based in northern Pakistan with, some NATO officials claim, the approval of Pakistani intelligence agencies. Scores of soldiers and Tamil rebels were killed in heavy fighting in Sri Lanka's northern Jaffna peninsula. The conflict began the day after the government and rebels agreed a date for peace talks later this month. The tipping point? Republicans were embroiled in the fallout from the Mark Foley scandal. As the ethics committee in the House of Representatives issued subpoenas in their investigation into the former congressman's communications with teenage pages, Dennis Hastert, the speaker, ignored calls to resign for his handling of the affair. Opinion polls showed a sharp drop in support for the party in next month's mid-term elections. See article A small plane caused a security scare in New York when it crashed into an apartment building. The pilot, a player for the New York Yankees baseball team, and his flight instructor were killed. In the only television debate in the California governor's race, Arnold AP Schwarzenegger, the incumbent, slugged it out with Phil Angelides, his Democratic opponent. He said Mr Angelides had “joy” in his eyes when he spoke about raising taxes. Mr Angelides did his best to link Mr Schwarzenegger to George Bush, but with the governor far ahead in the polls the chatter probably made little difference. The government announced plans to crack down on violations of the trade embargo on Cuba (sanctions-busting can carry a ten-year jail term). Critics said this was simply a way of propping up the Republican vote in southern Florida. Health update Raúl Castro, interim leader of Cuba, denied claims by American officials, reported in Time magazine, that his brother, President Fidel Castro, has terminal cancer and will never return to power. The president, who had intestinal surgery in July, was “getting better all the time”, he said. In the first televised debate between the two remaining candidates in Brazil's presidential election, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was put on the defensive by aggressive questioning from the centrist challenger, Geraldo Alckmin, about the corruption scandals that have dogged his four-year term in office. A grim statistic A team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimated that 650,000