published Thu, January 12, 2012

The Economist

News from The Economist

• Schumpeter: Good business; nice beaches

  ON JUNE 17th a hubbub of activists will gather in Rio de Janeiro for a conference on “good business for a sustainable future”, sponsored by something called the Ethical Fashion...

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• Selling clothes online in Russia: Fabric of society

  ONLINE as well as offline, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Vente-Privée, a firm founded on the strange notion that French women might like fashionable clothes at deep...

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• The internet business in Russia: Europe’s great exception

  ON THE roof, where staff can smoke as well as work, is a big chess set. The names of meeting rooms are in the Cyrillic alphabet. Two sides of the courtyard are a building site of...

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• Commercial aircraft: Duelling the duopolies

  The troubled Superjet IT MAY well turn out that pilot error, or something other than a fault in the aircraft, made a Russian-built Sukhoi Superjet crash into a mountain in...

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• Love, Korean-style: Two’s company

  Let’s swap emoticons SOUTH KOREANS take romance seriously. Lovers are expected to swap sweet nothings many times a day and woe betide the clod who forgets a “100-day anniversary”....

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• Mediaset: End of an era

  BABEL TV, a niche channel on Sky Italia, a pay-TV platform owned by Rupert Murdoch, airs worthy programming for immigrants. Recent shows include “Invitation to Dinner”, a reality show where an...

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• Airlines in ex-Yugoslavia: Balkan unity?

  EASTERN EUROPEAN airlines are sick. Fuel is dear, their markets are small and budget airlines are poaching their passengers. Most eastern European airlines lose money. Malev, Hungary’s flag carrier,...

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• Foreign firms in India: Travellers checked

  BEFORE foreign investors came to India, its finance minister remarked recently, “we did not eat lizards.” For all the grumbles one hears about India’s economy, there is hardly a sense of desperation....

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• Schumpeter: Pretty profitable parrots

  EVERY year Les Wexner, the owner of Victoria’s Secret, a lingerie retailer, takes a month off to travel the world looking for other companies’ ideas to adopt. Limited Brands, his...

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• Valuing Facebook: Zuckerberg’s rocket, ready for lift-off

  OUTSIDE Facebook’s vast new headquarters in Silicon Valley is a huge sign with an image of a hand on it giving a thumbs-up sign. A tiny digital version of the same hand sits on...

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