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阿勒~不是猴哥催我，我还真的忘了今天又是我发帖。。我面壁跪地吧！
大家棍棍节happy吧~~哇咔咔！
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【SPEED】
[Time One]
Britain Pushing Harder for International Resolution in Syria
LONDON — As opponents of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad meet in Doha, Britain is pushing for greater internationalinvolvement in the ongoing crisis in Syria. Some analysts say that pursuing apolitical solution, rather than a military one, is Britain's best play forSyria.
In Jordan, British Prime Minister DavidCameron visited Syrians in Zaatari camp, which houses about 30,000 refugees,and he said the international community needs to put a new focus on solvingSyria's conflict.
"We want Assad to go. We want to see apeaceful, political transition and a safe country for the future. But rightnow, the international community has to recognize, that what we have done isnot enough," said Cameron.
While on a trip to Thailand, Britain'sForeign Secretary, William Hague, presented a written statement to the Britishparliament that Britain will begin talks with the armed opposition in Syria.But he said the rebels will not be supplied with arms.
Diplomacy has been largely fruitless, withSyria's allies at the U.N. Security Council, Russia and China, repeatedlyblocking attempts to hit Syria with tougher sanctions.
In a televised interview that aired Friday,Syrian President Bashar al-Assad warned the international community againstgetting involved.
"It is not about reconciling with thepeople, and it is not about reconciliation between the Syrians and the Syrians;we do not have a civil war," said Assad. "It is about terrorism andthe support coming from abroad to terrorists to destabilize Syria. This is our war.
[247]
[Time Two]
Alia Brahimi, from the London School ofEconomics, said if Britain does want to help resolve the crisis in Syria, itshould focus on the political rather than the military approach.
"To look at extending intense andperhaps military support to the armed opposition in Syria is very dangerousbecause that kind of effort so far, particularly on the part of some Gulfcountries, has only led to the exacerbation of the conflict," saidBrahimi.
A video, which cannot be independentlyverified, appears to show clashes in Aleppo in northwestern Syria, part ofescalating violence.
As battles continue inside Syria, theSyrian opposition has been holding talks in Qatar aimed at forming a politicalalternative to Assad's rule. Up until now, sharp divisions within theopposition have hampered attempts to oust Assad.
Forming a united political front may be theonly chance to bring peace to Syria, though, according to Michael Kerr, ofKing's College London.
"At the minute China and Russia areresisting any efforts to push Assad out without something that will replace himthat does not negate their interests in Syria," said Kerr.
Britain and its Western allies are bankingthat replacement can come out of the opposition meeting in Doha. Until then,thousands of Syrians continue to flee into neighboring countries.
[215]
[Time Three]
News papers versus Google：Taxing times
As newspapers’ woes grow, some are lobbyingpoliticians to make Google pay for the news it publishes
IN 2009 Rupert Murdoch called Google andother search engines “content kleptomaniacs”. Now cash-strapped newspapers wantto put legal pressure on what they see as parasitical news aggregators.
In Germany politicians are considering abill to extend copyright protection to excerpts of newspaper articles appearingin search engines’ results, thus enabling publishers to collect payment forthem. Google is the main target: some German newspaper executives say itbenefits from showcasing their material in search results on its newsaggregator, Google News. A similar bill has been proposed in Italy. Frenchnewspapers want the same. On October 29th President François Hollande warnedEric Schmidt, the chairman of Google, that if French newspapers’ demands forcompensation are not met by year-end, France may pass a law akin to the Germanone. Austrian and Swiss publishers are thinking along similar lines.
Giving away the headline and first sentenceof an article supposedly dissuades readers from clicking through to thenewspaper’s website to read the entire story. Critics also say that liftingeven snippets of articles means Google can sell advertisements alongside themon its search platform (though Google News carries no ads).
But the benefit goes the other way, too.Google says it directs 4 billion clicks to news websites every month; perhapsas much as three-quarters of Google News users go on to read the full article.And newspapers can add a tag to their pages so that they do not appear inGoogle News.
German lawmakers will start to discuss thebill this month, and it could pass next spring. Newspapers will then probablyjoin forces to set up a collecting society, rather as the music industrycollects royalties on songs.
[298]
[Time Four]
Google has said that having to pay forarticles could “threaten its very existence”. But its most likely responsewould be to remove pages from newspaper sites in the countries concerned fromits search results. That would hit media outlets that depend on search-enginetraffic to boost their revenues from online adverts. Even Mr Murdoch, whopulled his newspapers from Google’s search results in 2010, decided inSeptember that headlines and teaser text from the articles should reappear.Google News is not universally important. In October over 150 Braziliannewspapers opted out of it (although they still feature in results on Google’smain search engine), saying they should be paid for their work. Traffic droppedby only 5%.
Newspapers are also claiming that copyrightlaw is on their side. America’s laws are more relaxed than most of Europe’s, sosearch engines’ use of some material from articles qualifies there as “fairuse”. But in Belgium a group of newspapers sued Google for news copyrightinfringement and won. The company is appealing against the ruling but is likelyto have to pay some damages.
The real issue behind all this, however, isthe decline of traditional media. In France not a single national newspaper isprofitable, despite around ?.2 billion ($1.54 billion) in direct and indirectgovernment subsidies, according to Olivier Fleurot, the boss of MSLGROUP, acommunications firm, and a former chief executive at the Financial Times,part-owner of The Economist. Google can hardly be blamed for the recession,declining readership, and slumping advertising revenue. Online advertising hasnot offset the decline of print ads in newspapers. In 2011 newspaperadvertising globally amounted to $76 billion, down 41% since 2007, according tothe World Association of Newspapers. Only 2.2% of newspapers’ advertisingrevenues last year came from digital platforms, and even these are vulnerableto ad-blocking software (see article).
[309]
[Time Five]
News sprint
Even if some countries do get Google to payup for using their headlines and some text from articles, it will hardly plugthe holes in their newspapers’ revenues, or speed their restructuring. JanMalinowski, a media expert at the Council of Europe, says trying to get Googleto pay for articles “is like trying to ban Gutenberg’s printing press in orderto protect the scribes”.
The legal pressure may in any case beovertaken by changes in business models. Newspapers have mostly avoidedcharging users for reading articles in the hope of boosting visitor numbers totheir websites. But thinking is shifting. Many of the Brazilian papers thatopted out of Google News will launch paywalls next year, says Carlos FernandoLindenberg Neto, president of the Brazilian newspapers’ association.
The emerging business model is now themetered paywall: a few free articles entice readers, but they must pay if theywant more (a model used by The Economist and the New York Times, among others).Paywalls have doubled in America this year. Other outlets are banding togetherto charge for access. Piano Media, a Slovakian firm, lets users buy access tomultiple websites, TV and radio stations in a single country for a flat fee. Itpays publishers in proportion to time spent by users on their sites. Such ideasmay work better than hoping for a cheque from Google.
[231]
【obstacle】
Business education：No longer the place to be
Data from The Economist’s latest ranking ofMBA programmes show Europe’s charms waning. A poor economy and Britain’sill-advised visa policy are to blame
NOT so long ago business students flockedto Europe. Compared with their American counterparts, European schools werecheaper and their student bodies more diverse, both attractive features—and thesalaries of European MBA graduates were often higher, too. Some of theseattractions remain undimmed. But they are no longer enough to bring in thepunters. Data from The Economist’s latest ranking of full-time MBA programmessuggest the appeal of an Old World business education has gone into a rapiddecline.
The intakes of many of Europe’s flagshipfull-time MBA programmes have plummeted (see chart). Enrolment on AstonBusiness School’s MBA, for example, more than halved in the past academic year,falling from 129 students to 59. By far the biggest drop was among Asianstudents. HEC School of Management in Paris enrolled 181 full-time MBAs in thepast academic year compared with 233 the previous one. It is a similar storyacross Europe. Some smaller schools have been desperately scrabbling around tofind the 30 students that some MBA rankings see as the minimum for a course ingood standing.
One obvious reason why students might stayaway is the dire economy. MBAs can look like a good way to sit out a short downturn.In a longer one they lose their charm. With no job-producing European recoveryin sight, going there for an MBA seems not so much cleverly counter-cyclical asstubbornly contrarian.
Europe’s slide also reflects a problemspecific to its most important MBA market. The average class size of theBritish MBA programmes ranked by The Economist has decreased by 11% over thepast year. Schools blame Britain’s newly toughened visa requirements for non-EUstudents. Graduates used to have an automatic right to stay and work for twoyears. Now, they must find a sponsoring company and land a job which pays atleast £20,000 ($32,000) a year. The number of visas available to studentswanting to start their own business is piddling.
There’salways Canada
Would-be students are well aware of this.David Simmons, the director of the full-time MBA programme at Cranfield Schoolof Management, says comments telling prospective students to forget aboutcoming to Britain are rife on Indian MBA blogs. The recent debacle at LondonMetropolitan University (LMU) has fortified this impression. The governmentdecided that LMU, which has a business school, was not stringent enough intracking non-EU students once they were enrolled and in September stoppedautomatically granting visas to its students. 2,600 students who had alreadybegun classes, including some on the MBA course, were told that they would haveto apply again to an alternative university.
Many business-school administrators thinksome universities have indeed been lax in their admissions procedures. But,they argue, this is not a reason to crack down on business schools. The newregime is enforced without regard to a university’s reputation, the subjectbeing studied, or whether the course is an under- or postgraduate one. AMBA, aBritish-based accreditation agency for business schools, says its members arebeing badly hurt.
AMBA is lobbying the British government totake a less bludgeon-wielding approach. Students on the MBA programmes itaccredits must have clocked up at least three years’ work experience sincegaining an undergraduate degree. These, it thinks, are exactly the brightsparks the country should be wooing. “These are not people coming here just tofind work in McDonalds,” says Carol Turner, AMBA’s communications director.
The fact that European schools arestruggling is particularly galling because America has also made it moredifficult for foreign students to work in the country after graduation,providing what should be an extra opportunity for the Europeans. American MBAprogrammes are typically twice the length of those in Europe, making both thecost and the opportunity cost of studying there higher. The salaries earned byAmerican MBA graduates have been stagnant for over a decade. All this shouldhave spurred students from poorer countries to apply to European schools.
Instead, the countries doing well out ofAmerica’s closing doors and high costs are Canada and Australia. Australiarecently ditched its own strict policy on student visas in favour of a morewelcoming approach. And Canada has perhaps gone further than any country inwooing overseas students. As of 2008, all students who have completed atwo-year master’s degree automatically have the right to stay in the countryand work for three years. They do not need to have a job lined up and are notrestricted to working in a field linked to their studies, as they would be inAmerica.
This is one reason why, over the past twoyears, Canada has seen a bigger increase in applications for full-time MBAplaces than any other region. Charmaine Courtis, executive director of studentservices at York University’s Schulich School of Business in Toronto, says thataround 80% of foreign MBAs at the school now choose to stay and work in Canadaimmediately after graduation. After that, she adds, most tend to return home,taking their newly honed skills with them.
It helps that both countries have economiesconsiderably more vibrant than most of Europe’s. It also helps that high-payingmining and energy firms have begun to recruit managers straight from their MBAprogrammes, rather than rely on promoting engineers from within. This hashelped make Australia’s MBAs the highest-paid in the world. Recent graduates atCurtin Business School, in Western Australia, earned an average of $150,000 intheir first job out of business school, easily outstripping peers from Harvard,London or Chicago. With the banks, brokers and investment houses which used torecruit a lot of Europe’s MBAs still pulling their horns in, it will be a whilebefore European schools can top that. Some Canadian schools are also takingadvantage of the mining boom; Schulich now has a mining MBA.
European schools must now compete forbrains not only with other rich countries but also with emerging markets. Asthe quality of Asian universities improves, many Asian students will prefer tostay at home. While countries such as India and China once boasted only a fewinternationally recognised schools, this is changing fast. AMBA, which tenyears ago had not accredited a single school in China, now accredits 20; itgave its seal of approval to five of those in the past six months. AccreditedChinese schools enrolled, on average, 40% more students in 2011 than in 2010.If rich countries do not lay out welcome mats soon, they may find the queuesoutside their doors have disappeared.
[1141]
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【随意阅读拉拉~】
Our “Which MBA?” rankings
Losing the blues
DESPITE its reputation as a finance powerhouse, and a churner-out of super-quants, the return of Chicago’s Booth School of Business to the top of The Economist’s full-time MBA rankings is proof that it is a well-rounded school. Our ranking measures the things that MBA students themselves say are important. Not surprisingly, for a degree that can cost more than $100,000, the extent to which a programme opens new career opportunities comes highest on their list. In this regard, Chicago has few peers. Its graduates find employment in the widest range of industries; its students gushed about its careers service. Chicago has topped the ranking for two of the past three years, briefly losing its crown to Dartmouth’s Tuck school last year. North America and Europe account for all the schools in the top 25. The highest-placed school from outside those regions is the University of Queensland, at 27th. The highest-placed Asian school is the University of Hong Kong, which ranks 41st. The Economist ranks schools on four measures: their ability to open new career opportunities; personal development and educational experience; the salary increase graduates can expect; and the potential to network. Data are collected from schools and from a student questionnaire. See the full ranking and our briefing on MBAs.
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发表于 2012-11-11 23:31:44
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