A harmonious and stable crackdown

China celebrates a milestone with a new round of repression

IN THE West many people retire at 60. China’s Communist Party is still going strong. And strong is the word. Amid the global financial crisis, asserted one leading newspaper, a huge military parade due to take place in Beijing on October 1st to mark the 60th anniversary of the communist nation’s founding will be an “effective way of deterring hostile forces at home and abroad”. The event will certainly show that China is unafraid either to spend money or to risk spoiling celebrations with a massive clampdown.

Police in the capital, helped by hundreds of thousands of volunteers, are being mobilised in a security operation as stifling as that mounted for last year’s Olympic Games. Officials are under orders to stop people travelling to Beijing to complain about local injustices. Riot police have been put on heightened alert in restive Tibet and Xinjiang (though fresh protests involving hundreds of Han Chinese broke out in Xinjiang’s capital Urumqi as The Economist went to press).
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Steve Jobs lights up Apple show

Apple boss Steve Jobs stole the show at an event to launch new products as he took to the stage for the first time in nearly a year following medical leave.

Mr Jobs returned to work at the end of June after taking a six month break to recover from a liver transplant.

After a long summer of speculation about what would roll off the Apple production line, the products took second billing to Mr Jobs’ appearance.

“I’m vertical and I’m back,” joked Mr Jobs at a press event in San Francisco.

As the audience rose to give him a standing ovation and cheer his return, the notoriously private Mr Jobs talked briefly about the operation he received at a hospital in Tennessee.
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Obama faces US Congress on health

US President Barack Obama is making one of the most critical speeches of his presidency, as he faces Congress over his plans for healthcare reform.

Mr Obama has said he will use the prime-time speech to clarify what changes he is proposing.

According to the White House, Mr Obama will say after 100 years of effort to reform healthcare, he wants to be the last president to deal with the issue.

He will say that if reforms are not produced, more Americans will die.
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When cheap is exclusive

Hard times for luxury retailers are good times for discount fashion websites

THE racks of expensive gowns and shoes sit, serene and mostly untouched, on the floors of Saks Fifth Avenue, Bergdorf Goodman, Bloomingdale’s and almost every fancy department store. In a sign of how consumers’ newfound thrift has hurt luxury retailers, Saks Incorporated, the parent company of Saks Fifth Avenue, recently announced losses of more than $50m in the three months to July. Sales are down more than 20%. The recession, it seems, has spelt an end to Americans’ appetite for luxury—at department-store prices, at any rate.

Yet luxury e-tailers, which sell designer goods online at discounted prices, are flourishing. The slowdown has actually helped them, simultaneously producing seemingly endless supplies of unsold inventory and forcing consumers to tighten their belts. That has let American e-tailers such as Gilt Groupe, HauteLook and Rue La La, and their French rival Vente-privee.com, sell last season’s designer apparel for as much as 80% off the original price.
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Commandos free abducted reporter in Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan (CNN) — A New York Times reporter who was kidnapped last week was freed by commandos Wednesday.

Stephen Farrell was rescued in a pre-dawn raid conducted by NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), the British Foreign Office said.

Farrell, along with a driver and translator, were kidnapped Saturday while covering a NATO airstrike on Taliban forces in the northern Kunduz province that killed at least 90 people.

The British Foreign Office would confirm only that one hostage had been rescued.
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UK is Europe’s ‘easiest economy’

The UK is the fifth easiest economy in the world in which to conduct business, according to the World Bank.

It has moved up one place from last year in the bank’s annual “Doing Business” survey, making it the best placed country in Europe.

Singapore retained the top spot, ahead of New Zealand, Hong Kong and the US.

The report found that a record 131 economies – more than 70% of those surveyed – reformed business regulation in 2008-9, amid the global downturn.

This is the largest share in any year since the report was launched in 2004.
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