European Institute

Newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic are sick and seem to be dying. In the U.S., newspaper consumption has decreased by two-thirds in the last decade. The demise is partly blamed on “free news” available online. But, in fact, the actual information that appears online in blogs and sites of all kinds depends heavily on costly-to-run mainstream media. A Pew survey two years ago showed that nine-tenths of the “news” is produced by fewer than a dozen major outlets, most of them big newspapers with big journalistic staffs. Now even a prime “culprit” -- Google – seems to be drawing the smart conclusion and wanting to help preserve, if not newspapers, at least good reporting and news that it can use.

In an emergency weekend ministerial meeting, the EU launched “the mother of all rescue” plans in an effort to save itself from global lenders’ doubts about the unity and financial credibility of the eurozone. A package worth nearly a trillion dollars was announced as markets opened Monday in Asia. Unprecedented in its scale and scope, the EU action impressed analysts as a response to the international dimensions of the crisis, providing a sweeping solution of the sort that has eluded the EU leaders at every previous stage in the crisis. Announced after 11 hours of negotiations Sunday, the rescue seemed to rise to the challenge explained in this blog last Friday: “Euro’s Fate at Stake in Emergency Talks This Weekend.” By Friday, the market onslaught seemed almost overwhelming: market players said that the number and amounts of sums invested to “short” the euro had reached new records.

A controversial new paper by climate scientists says that more effective immediate remedies against climate change can be found in tackling specific small warming agents other than CO2 – for example, black carbon. These particles – basically, soot – are emitted from incomplete burning of fossil fuels, mainly in diesel engines and wood. As light-absorbing specks (for example, on snow and ice in the Arctic), they darken the white reflective surface, absorbing more solar energy.

In a drive to prove how serious it is about nuclear disarmament, the Obama administration last week made public the size of the American nuclear arsenal – 5, 113 weapons. This number attests a drastic cut back from cold war levels and is intended to show that the U.S. is complying with its responsibility under the forty-year-old nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) by its own moves toward nuclear disarmament and wants other signatory nations such as Iran to adhere to their commitments to refrain from seeking nuclear weapons.