Bittersweet Chocolate News in Europe

Chocolate is in the news across Europe these days, in more ways than one.

The French government came in for withering criticism from Malaysia on Monday for the so-called “Nutella Amendment” tax. If passed, the levy would quadruple - from 100 Euros to 400 Euros - the import tax on Malaysian palm oil, which makes up 20 percent of the chocolatey-buttery Nutella goodness, without which no French pantry feels entirely complete.

France's Socialist government claims the tax is part of an effort to curb a worrying increase of Gallic obesity, but given how much Nutella the French consume - rougly 100 million or so jars - it could also add some "40 million, more than $50 million, to help shore up the country's sagging finances. Malaysia's Palm Oil Council was quick to respond to the threat, saying “every nutritional and food expert concludes that palm oil is in fact free of dangerous trans fats, free of GMOs and contains valuable vitamins.” And a spokesman for F errero, the Italian company that produces Nutella, sought to reassure worried French consumers, saying it had no intention of changing its winning recipe.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, the British government revealed that the Cadbury Dairy Milk bar had been reduced in size from 49 grams to 45 grams (1.73 ounces down to 1.59 ounces), while still being sold at the same price of 59 pence (94 cents) prompting the Office of National Statistics to include the change in its most recent consumer price index as a 10 percent price hike. As Richard Campbell, an ONS statistician, told the Telegraph, “Our price collectors noticed that chocolate bars and bags of sweets were decreasing in size by around 10 percent so we felt it was important to inform the public.”

If the European appetite for Nutella and Cadbury does begin to slide, however, there is no shortage of chocolatiers eager to step into the mix, as it were. A Portuguese producer told Confectionary News last week that it was ramping up production of a “passionfruit” chocolate bar in a bid to satisfy European demand for “exotic” chocolate flavors like pineapple, strawberry and orange.

Beyond its sweetness, chocolate also turns out to be a pretty good economic indicator in Europe. Demand for cocoa reached a two-year high this week. And chocolate sales in Western Europe, which accounts for 32 percent of global chocolate demand, are expected to increase. That prompted Jonathan Parkman, an agricultural expert at Marex Spectron Group in London to tell BloombergBusinessweek, “There has been a pretty good link between global GDP growth and the growth of chocolate consumption in the last 20 to 30 years and I don't think you can just throw that link away.”

In chocolate-rich Switzerland, producer AG Barry Callebaut, which produces chocolate for Hershey and Nestle, said it expected chocolate sales to pick up across Europe heading into 2013.

In Northern Ireland - a land kno wn less for its chocolate and more for potatoes and rebel movements - a company called Choc-O-Bloc announced this week it had made its first sales of an edible chocolate toy called Magic Choc. Designers worked for years to create a malleable - and edible - form of Belgian chocolate, both dark and white, which children could fashion into shapes and then eat. “Our technology allows the chocolate to be handcrafted into various models without melting in the process,” said founder Stephen Lennie.

Capping the chocolate tide was the news from Kings College London that researchers were looking into whether there was a link between a country's chocolate consumption and its propensity to garner Nobel Prizes. The best news yet? There was, indeed, a strong correlation!

Congress Ends, Mystery Surrounding Xi Remains

BEIJING - Through binoculars, I watched as Xi Jinping, China's vice president and the man almost certain to be its next leader, rose from his seat seconds after the last, brassy notes of the Internationale died away in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Wednesday.

It was around noon and more than 2,000 delegates to the Communist Party's 18th National Congress had just chosen a new Central Committee of just over 200 people, though their names had not been announced. (The committee will elect a Politburo, a Standing Committee of the Politburo and a general secretary, or party leader, on Thursday.)

President Hu Jintao had just delivered his brief, closing address to the congress, in which he said his work report on the last five years, delivered on the opening day of the Congress the previous Thursday, was “the crystallization of the wisdom of the whole party and the people of all ethnic groups in China.”

He called it “a political declaration a nd a program of action for the party to rally and lead the people of all ethnic groups in China in winning new victory for socialism with Chinese characteristics. The report is a guiding Marxist document.”

The congress was over.

On the stage, scores of party grandees milled around, picking up papers, greeting each other and shaking hands.

Mr. Xi remained alone, surveying the crowd. No one came up to him and he approached no one. As people began to head for the exits, Li Keqiang, the man almost certain to be his prime minister (Mr. Xi is expected to be chosen party leader on Thursday and to become president next year), passed by Mr. Xi, and the two fell into step, talking. After a few paces Mr. Li turned to a line of delegates, shaking hands, while Mr. Xi hung back. He shook a hand or two. Then he walked off the stage, alone.

As I wrote in my Letter from China this week, Mr Xi, 59, was a long-prepared candidate for high office.

“He's very sta ble. He's low-key. He's not a show-off who attracts attention. These are qualities that the people choosing leaders here value very highly,” said a Europe-based Chinese journalist who writes for People's Daily, the party newspaper, speaking earlier that morning.

Mr. Xi is personable too, according to overseas politicians, diplomats and businessmen who have met him. He is warmer than Mr. Hu, and is known to be in a state of despair at the poor state of Chinese soccer, rolling his eyes when asked about the national team on a trip to Ireland in February, according to people present.

Yet in most ways he remains a mystery, like so much else that happened this week at the congress where access for reporters was limited.

Waiting outside the hall just before the ceremony, I approached a group of a half-dozen men in olive green military uniforms, said hello, and asked if we could chat. They stared at me in silence, not a smile on a face.

“I, uh, guess you don't want to talk, is that right?” I said, trying to make light of it. “It's a pity, no? I mean, if people can't talk, misunderstandings may easily arise,” I said.

Still no one spoke.

Then one of them said: “We are not allowed to accept interviews.” The others nodded.

And that was that. I still have no idea who they were.

At a Swedish Preschool, No \'He\' or \'She\'

Swedish School's Big Lesson Begins With Dropping Personal Pronouns

Casper Hedberg for The New York Times

All children at the Nicolaigarden school may play with dolls, and both boys and girls, called “friends,” can cry.

STOCKHOLM - At an ocher-color preschool along a lane in Stockholm's Old Town, the teachers avoid the pronouns “him” and “her,” instead calling their 115 toddlers simply “friends.” Masculine and feminine references are taboo, often replaced by the pronoun “hen,” an artificial and genderless word that most Swedes avoid but is popular in some gay and feminist circles.

In the little library, with its throw pillows where children sit to be read to, there are few classic fairy tales, like “Cinderella” or “Snow White,” with their heavy male and female stereotypes, but there are many stories that deal with single parents, adopted children or same-sex couples.

Girls are not urged to play with toy kitchens, and wooden or Lego blocks are not considered toys for boys. And when boys hurt themselves, teachers are taught to give them every bit as much comforting as they would girls. Everyone gets to play with dolls, and while most are anatomically correct, some are also black.

Sweden is perhaps as renowned for an egalitarian mind-set as it is for meatballs or Ikea furnishings. But this taxpayer-financed preschool, known as the Nicolaigarden for a saint whose chapel was once in the 300-year-old building that houses it, is perhaps one of the more compelling examples of the country's efforts to blur gender lines and, theoretically, cement opportunities for both women and men.

What the children are taught, said Malin Engleson, an art gallery employee, as she fetched her 15-month-old daughter Hanna from the school, “shows that girls can cry, but boys too.”

“That's why we chose it,” she said. “It's so important to start at an early age.”

The model has been so successful that two years ago three of its teachers opened an offshoot, which now has almost 40 children. That school, named Egalia to suggest equality, is in a 1960s housing project in the Sodermalm neighborhood.

What has become a passionate undertaking for its teachers actually began with a nudge from Swedish legislators, who in 1998 passed a bill requiring that schools, including day care centers, assure equal opportunities for girls and boys.

Spurred by the law, the teachers at Nicolaigarden took the unusual step of filming one another, capturing their behavior while playing with, eating with or just being with the center's infants to 6-year-olds.

“We could see lots of differences, for example, in the handling of boys and girls,” said Lotta Rajalin, who directs the center and three others, which she visits by bicycle. “If a boy was crying because he hurt himself, he was consoled, but for a shorter time, while girls were held and soothed much longer,” she said. “With a boy it was, ‘Go on, it's not so bad!' ”

The filming, she said, also showed that staff members tended to talk more with girls than with boys, perhaps explaining girls' later superior language skills. If boys were boisterous, that was accepted, Ms. Rajalin said; a girl trying to climb a tree on an outing in the country was stopped.

The result, after much discussion, was a seven-point program to alter such behavior. “We avoid using words like boy or girl, not because it's bad, but because they represent stereotypes,” said Ms. Rajalin, 53. “We just use the name - Peter, Sally - or ‘Come on, friends!' ” Men were added to the all-female staff. With Egalia, Nicolaigarden sought and obtained certification from an organization for gay and bisexual people that its staff is sensitive to their problems.

Criticism was not long in arriving. “There are a lot of letters, mail, blogs,” Ms. Rajalin said. “But it's not so much arguments; it's anger, basically.”

A version of this article appeared in print on November 14, 2012, on page A8 of the New York edition with the headline: A School's Big Lesson Begins With Dropping Personal Pronouns.

Sotheby's Accused of Deceit in Sale of Khmer Statue

Federal prosecutors trying to seize a multimillion-dollar 10th-century Cambodian statue from Sotheby's have accused the auctioneers of colluding with the item's owner to hide information that it was stolen from a temple in 1972, according to papers filed in United States District Court in Manhattan.

The Khmer statue that prosecutors say was stolen from a temple.

Prosecutors say that in 2010, when the statue was being imported into the United States, the owner submitted an inaccurate affidavit to American customs officials, at Sotheby's request, stating the statue was “not cultural property” belonging to a religious site.

The government contended in its filing on Friday that both parties knew the statue, a mythic Hindu warrior known as Duryodhanna, valued at up to $3 million, was stolen when they agreed to ship it from Belgium to New York. The government says it can prove that the statue in fact came from a Khmer Dynasty temple, Prasat Chen, part of a vast and ancient complex called Koh Ker.

Sotheby's on Tuesday denied the allegations, saying the government is straining to bolster a thin case by picking selectively through the evidence provided by the auctioneers.

The United States attorney's office is trying “to tar Sotheby's with a hodgepodge of other allegations designed to create the misimpression that Sotheby's acted deceptively in selling the statue,” the auction house said in a statement. “That is simply not true.”

At the heart of the case are the questions of when the statue left Cambodia and whether Cambodian laws and international accords in effect at that time would have barred the item's removal.

The government has accused Sotheby's of providing “inaccurate information to potential buyers, to Cambodia and to the United States,” and lists both civil and criminal penalties. Sotheby's has said the statue's removal from Cambodia cannot be dated with certainty given the centuries of looting after the fall of the Khmer kingdom in the 15th century.

“The original complaint relied on a series of hopelessly ambiguous French colonial decrees,” Sotheby's said in a statement. (Cambodia was a French protectorate until 1953.) “There is no clear and unambiguous law that would have given purchasers fair notice that the modern state of Cambodia claims ownership of everything a long-defunct regime made and then abandoned 50 generations ago.”

In September, a federal judge expressed skepticism about the government's case, saying that Cambodia did not have “clear ownership established by clear and unambiguous language.”

The sculpture is a hulking 500-pound Khmer masterpiece that was set to be auctioned in March 2011 but withdrawn after Cambodia objected and asked for its return. Cambodia is also seeking the return of a companion piece, of a warrior called Bhima, that is on display at the Norton Simon Museum in California. Cambodia has identified the two massive pedestals where the statues once stood because their feet match the statues, which were broken off at the ankles.

Federal investigators have said the Sotheby's statue was among thousands pillaged during civil war in Cambodia in the 1970s and that Cambodian witnesses recall seeing it in place in that era. In its amended complaint, the government said it had narrowed the date of removal to “in or about 1972” and had identified the looting ring that took it. The ring was not identified in the papers.

Prosecutors said the looters turned the statue over to a Thai middleman, and it ended up in the hands of a “collector,” but the papers do not name him. The collector is said to have sold the statue to a London dealer, Spink & Son, a major purveyor of Asian artifacts now reincorporated under the name Spink. In 1975, the statue was bought by the husband, now dead, of a Belgian woman named Decia Ruspoli di Poggio Suasa, who turned the work over to Sotheby's for auction in 2010.

The government contends Sotheby's left out the name of the collector who sold the statue to Spink and other details about the statue's provenance to mask the trail of the artwork. Sotheby's denied that, saying it left out the name of the collector because he had no role in the deal.

Douglas A. J. Latchford, an Asian art collector, donor and adviser to the Cambodian government on Khmer antiquities, said by phone from Bangkok that he is the collector referred to in the court papers.

He said Spink bought the statue in Thailand in late 1971 or 1972. He said he is listed by name on Spink's original ownership papers because, unknown to him, the company had used his funds for “accounting purposes” to purchase the statue. He said he never had possession of the statue.

Mr. Latchford rejected government claims that he and Spink knew the statue was stolen from Cambodia and conspired to “fraudulently obtain export licenses” to send it from Thailand to England in 1972. He said the case “is based on suppositions - they have no facts.”

Prosecutors also say Sotheby's tried to mislead potential buyers and the Cambodian and United States governments by concocting a tale that the sculpture had been seen by a “scholar” in London in the 1960s, four years before its actual theft.

The date is significant because most American museums will no longer purchase antiquities without proof that they left their countries before 1970, the date of a United Nations covenant aimed at protecting cultural heritage items from looters and disreputable buyers.

The evidence collected by the government includes an e-mail from a Sotheby's official to the Khmer scholar, Emma C. Bunker, that in part reads, “If I can push the provenance back to 1970, then U.S. museums can participate in the auction without any hindrance.”

Sotheby's said, “This e-mail illustrates the appropriate due diligence” that the house undertook “to learn the provenance of the statue prior to 1975.” The auction house says it gave the government a document that shows that Ms. Bunker told it that the sighting was in the 1960s.

A version of this article appeared in print on November 14, 2012, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: Sotheby's Accused Of Deceit in Sale Of Khmer Statue.

New York Philharmonic Establishes Partnership With Shanghai

Philharmonic Establishes Partnership With Shanghai

China long ago emerged as a kind of promised land for classical music, and two of America's great orchestras are wading in with big projects and very different approaches. You could call one the Philadelphia flier and the other the Big Apple plod.

Long Yu is music director of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra.

The Philharmonic oboist Liang Wang in China in 2008.

The New York Philharmonic is planning to publicize on Wednesday a four-year partnership with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra. It will include a 10- to 14-day residency in China and a stake in an orchestra training program. The Philharmonic's involvement in training will begin in the fall of 2014, after the details are worked out, and its residency is scheduled to begin the following summer.

Then there is the Philly way. The Philadelphia Orchestra beat the Philharmonic to the punch, descending on Beijing and provincial cities last spring with a menu of master classes, lessons, concerts, and visits to parks, schools and hospitals. The tour was part of a partnership with the National Center for the Performing Arts in Beijing.

But Philadelphia's venture was more improvised. It came together just eight months after being announced. A spokeswoman, Katherine E. Blodgett, called the visit a pilot project to test its plans. The Philadelphia Orchestra intends to return next spring and hopes that the residency will establish the foundation for a long-term relationship, she said.

Ms. Blodgett noted that the Philadelphia Orchestra was the first American orchestra to visit the People's Republic of China, in 1973, and returned in 2008 and 2010. The New York Philharmonic visited in 2008, while on its way to North Korea.

Explosion may not be too hyperbolic a word for the increase in concert halls, orchestras, instrument making and classical music study in China during the past decade. Audiences are growing in tandem. Many concert presenters are hungry for top international ensembles to fill the gleaming new auditoriums.

At the same time, with government determination to build culture as a form of national power, and willingness to spend on the effort, Chinese officials are happy to import Western cultural expertise. The home of the Philharmonic, Lincoln Center, announced nearly 17 months ago, for example, that it would become a paid consultant to developers of an arts complex in Tianjin, a city about 45 minutes by bullet train from Beijing.

The New York Philharmonic deal is unrelated to the Lincoln Center venture and stems partly from the energies of the conductor Long Yu, a central figure in the Chinese classical music scene. Mr. Yu, a Shanghai native, is music director of the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra and artistic director of the China Philharmonic and of the Beijing Music Festival.

More crucial, he is music director of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, which paid the Philharmonic to share a concert with it in Central Park in July 2010. In addition to conducting the Shanghai orchestra in that concert, he led the Philharmonic in a Chinese New Year concert this year and will do the same on Feb. 12.

The Philharmonic first announced its partnership at a signing ceremony in Shanghai a full 16 months ago. The event received little attention in the Western press except for an account on WQXR's blog. The program was expected to begin in 2013 with the opening of a concert hall in Shanghai, WQXR reported. But the opening was delayed, and the project with it.

In recent interviews officials disclosed a few more details. A group of four or five Philharmonic members will spend a week, three times a year, working with students of a new orchestral academy in Shanghai. Teaching will also take place during the summer residency, which will include a number of Philharmonic orchestral and chamber performances. Some students may be brought to New York for extra training and to experience the “New York musical environment,” said the Philharmonic's executive director, Matthew VanBesien.

Students will be drawn from Asian countries, mainly China, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan, said Anastasia Boudanoque, an executive producer at CAMI Music, which is advising the Shanghai Symphony and represents Mr. Yu.

Mr. Yu said the academy would involve the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and would be modeled on the Berlin Philharmonic's training school, which is a feeder to the parent orchestra and provides continuity of musical traditions and substitute musicians. Scholarships for 30 to 50 musicians will be provided for the two-year program, he said. Philharmonic musicians will have a say in auditions.

“It's just a simple idea, to see how much we can help young musicians before stepping into professional work,” he said. One goal is also to counter the soloist mentality that predominates among many young Chinese musicians, he added.

The academy, Mr. Yu said, is just one of many pieces that China needs to complete its classical music solar system. Musicians abound, orchestras and halls are increasing, but the scene is weak in other elements, like professional managers, widely accessible ticketing systems, publicity machines and easy access to sheet music. Yes, there are audiences, he said, “but if we don't have a great system, they will stay at home.”

A version of this article appeared in print on November 14, 2012, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: Philharmonic Establishes Partnership With Shanghai.

Avoiding Photo Ops With Cambodia\'s Strongman

HONG KONG - President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will visit Southeast Asia this week, promoting American commercial interests in Singapore, reinforcing the U.S. military alliance with Thailand and putting the presidential imprimatur on democratic reforms in Myanmar.

But their stop in Cambodia for a regional summit meeting next week will be diplomatically stickier: Photo opportunities with Hun Sen, the authoritarian prime minister of Cambodia, will be hard to avoid.

A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry in Phnom Penh said that Mr. Obama and Hun Sen would hold one-on-one talks during the summit meeting, according to the Cambodia Daily. The public visibility of those talks, however, remains to be seen.

Human Rights Watch, in a report published Tuesday, calls for Mr. Obama to make human rights a forceful centerpiece of his visit to Cambodia, the first ever by a sitting American president. The report says Hun Sen's “violent and authoritarian rule over more than two decades has resulted in countless killings and other serious abuses that have gone unpunished.”

The full report, “ ‘Tell Them That I Want to Kill Them': Two Decades of Impunity in Hun Sen's Cambodia,” recounts numerous extrajudicial killings of labor leaders, journalists and opposition leaders since 1992.

“The list of political killings over the past 20 years is bone-chilling,” said Brad Adams, Asia director for Human Rights Watch. “While there is a public uproar after each case, officials do nothing and there are no consequences for the perpetrators or the government that protects them.”

The full H.R.W. report can be downloaded here. And the group's summary of the report is here.

As my colleague Peter Baker reported this week, Mrs. Clinton's trip through the Asia-Pacific region and Mr. Obama's stops in Southeast Asia are part of “a larger geopolitical chess game by the Obama administration, whi ch has sought to counter rising Chinese assertiveness by engaging its neighbors.”

A leading Cambodian political analyst, Lao Moung Hay, told The Cambodia Daily that Mr. Obama and Hun Sen would probably focus on security issues in the South China Sea - subtext: China - as well as the reform process in Burma. He said Mr. Obama was not likely to press Hun Sen on Cambodia's appalling record on human rights, the wide suppression of political dissent or the forced exile of Sam Rainsy, Cambodia's principal opposition leader.

“This is a new era for Hun Sen,” Lao Moung Hay told Thomas Fuller of the IHT, speaking about the political topography of Cambodia following the death last month of the former king Norodom Sihanouk. “There is no force to restrain him anymore - there are risks for the country.”

In a recent commentary in The Times, Mr. Rainsy called on Mr. Obama to boycott the meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

But the oppositi on lawmaker Mu Sochua told The Phnom Penh Post, “I'm sure that Obama is quite committed and his language will be very strong” about the government's alleged abuses.

Mu Sochua said she had pressed for a letter sent recently by five U.S. senators and seven members of Congress to Mr. Obama, urging him to challenge Hun Sen on an array of human rights issues. The Post called the letter “a damning indictment” of Hun Sen's regime but also said the message was “thinly sourced.”

Carlyle Thayer, a noted security analyst in the region, told The Post about the lawmakers' letter:

Be careful what you ask for, because Hun Sen can be tough if he wants to be, and China doesn't raise those issues, and Cambodia and Hun Sen, they've pointed that out repeated times.

Is this a political stunt or do you have a strategy to follow up? Are we going to vote for resolutions in the Senate, are we going to restrict money to the embassy or aid to Cambodia t o punish them, to pressure them on human rights? What do you do next?

Land grabs, forced evictions and 99-year leases of state lands to Cambodian, Chinese and Vietnamese firms have been well-documented by international aid agencies, human rights organizations and Cambodian and Western journalists.

Rendezvous has written about the murder in April of Chut Wutty, a pioneering environmental activist; the government's suppression of a land dispute that led to the arrest and conviction (on the astonishing charge of secession) of a leading radio journalist, Mam Sonando; and the murder of Hang Serei Oudom, a newspaper reporter investigating illegal logging who was found dead in the trunk of his car at a cashew plantation.

The veteran Times reporter Seth Mydans and the Magnum photographer John Vink have both reported deeply and extensively about forced evictions, especially in Phnom Penh, a campaign against poor landholders so odious that it caused the World Bank to suspend loans to Cambodia. And Amnesty International last year published a harrowing account of five Cambodian women forced off their land.

“Instead of prosecuting officials responsible for killings and other serious abuses, Prime Minister Hun Sen has promoted and rewarded them,” said the new Human Rights Watch report. “The message to Cambodians is that even well-known killers are above the law if they have protection from the country's political and military leaders. Donor governments, instead of pressing for accountability, have adopted a business-as-usual approach.”

Hun Sen, 60, a former Khmer Rouge soldier who changed allegiances, has run Cambodia for the better part of three decades, becoming one of the world's longest-serving autocrats and a member of the “10,000 Club.”

Mr. Adams, a former United Nations lawyer, said Hun Sen is one of “a group of strongmen who through politically motivated violence, control of the security forces, massive corruption and the tacit support of foreign powers have been able to remain in power for 10,000 days.”

Mr. Adams, in an op-ed piece in May, quoted Hun Sen's response to the possibility of an Arab Spring-style rebellion in Cambodia: “I not only weaken the opposition, I'm going to make them dead … and if anyone is strong enough to try to hold a demonstration, I will beat all those dogs and put them in a cage.”

What would you say is Mr. Obama's best diplomatic posture in Cambodia? Should he press Hun Sen hard on human rights abuses and risk pushing Cambodia closer to China? Or should he downplay these issues in an attempt to enlist Cambodia among the countries in the region that might oppose a rising and more aggressive China?

After Election Success, What\'s Next for U.S. Women?

NEW YORK â€" It was a battle won, not the war.

Women's history-making victory last week in the U.S. elections stirred up the dust that had seemed to have settled over the movement to get more women elected to office. The vote brought an injection of new blood and energy, new strategies, new questions and a whole lot of ambition.

For moderate and sensible conservative Republicans, the disproportionate victories of Democratic women and their lopsided support of President Obama raise painful questions: How long can the party be captive to its far-right wing whose ‘‘war on women'' and extreme anti-abortion views cost the party at least a seat or two in the U.S. Senate and probably the presidency?

But triumphant Democratic women know, having come off years of stagnant political growth and reversals at the ballot box, that attention must be paid to the nuts and bolts. Advancement on all fronts - within the party power structure, and in state legislatures, s tate houses and Congress - demand vigilance and sweat and tons of money and muscle.

‘‘We have been sleep-walking since 1992,'' said Siobhan ‘‘Sam'' Bennett, the head of Women's Campaign Fund, last week in an interview for my latest Female Factor column. ‘‘We thought this problem would somehow magically solve itself after 1992 ‘year of the woman.' Nothing could be further from the truth.''

Ms. Bennett wants the major political parties to enact mandates to guarantee women no less than 30 percent of their candidacies.

But gender quotas have few champions in quota-phobic America, even among feminists. There's little or no chance that such a gambit would receive viable support in Washington. Even in Western Europe, where gender quotas have wide backing, a proposal to require companies to set aside 40 percent of their boards for women has run into tough opposition from across the European Union.

If quotas and like measures find only small supp ort in the United States, what can women and advocates do to double down on political empowerment?

Michelle Bachelet, who was the first female president of Chile and is now head of the U.N. Women agency, told me a few months ago that nothing changed the status of women in her country as profoundly as having a female head of state. That did more to advance Chilean women than all the laws put together, she recalled.

Ask just about any woman and she will likely tell you, ‘‘Elect a woman president!''

Ask any Democrat, and she will cry out: ‘‘Hillary in 2016!''

But getting there will take a little bit of work, different approaches and voices, with or without Hillary Clinton.

For now, think about this: What should women do with their new power in the United States? What should be their policy and legislation priorities? What can they learn from women who have a greater say in other countries' politics and policy? Does anyone think that the 30 percent solution has a chance?

Let us know.

1909: France Flies, England Worries

On July 25, 1909, the French aviator Louis Blériot climbed into a monoplane in Calais, France, and flew to Dover, England. He made history. No one had crossed the English Channel in an aircraft before.

The next day, his flight dominated the European edition of The New York Herald, which later became the International Herald Tribune, now celebrating its 125th anniversary.

In a way, the flight was the Sputnik of its day, boosting national pride (for the French) and creating fear (for the British). It also tapped into emotions that are familiar today - excitement over technology's ability to weave the world together, but anxiety over whether this was an altogether good thing.

The Herald printed excerpts of reaction from newspapers on both sides of the Channel.

The French could barely contain their elation.

”The crossing of the Channel gives the impression of a definite conquest,'' said Pétite Republique. ‘‘It is the suppression o f the Channel. It is the realization of a dream which has long been entertained. It gives to mankind, to ourselves, poor mortals who have not yet left the ground, a sensation of mastery over the air such as we have not yet felt.''

The London press was gracious, though occasionally grudging. The Standard praised Blériot's ‘‘pluck and dexterity'' but sniffed, ‘‘The Channel steamer service is not yet threatened nor are we appreciably nearer the day when friends or enemies will fly to our shores.''

The Daily Express observed: ‘‘Great Britain has ceased to be an island.”

Other British newspapers described a bruise to national esteem and expressed alarm over a darker future.

Under the headline ‘‘Shock to Englishmen,'' an excerpt from The Morning Post said: ‘‘We are a cautious race, skeptical of all innovation. … But here it is: conjecture and theorizing are at an end. This country not only can be, but has been reached, by mech anical flight. While fully and freely congratulating M. Blériot, it is impossible not to feel a touch of jealousy that this historic achievement has not fallen to the lot of an Englishman.''

‘‘Wake up, England!'' roared another headline, under which The Daily Graphic noted: ‘‘What M. Blériot can do in 1909 a hundred, nay, a thousand, aeroplanes may be able to do in five years … a machine which can fly from Calais to Dover is not a toy, but an instrument of warfare which soldiers an statesmen must take into account.''

A half-decade later, the dogfight became a staple of World War I combat. Three decades later, English people huddled in subway stations to hide from the terror of German bombs dropped from the sky.

Photographs from the archives of the International Herald Tribune will be sold on Nov. 19 at 2 p.m. at the auction house Drouot in Paris.

U.S. and Iraq: Game Changers in the Global Oil Supply?

LONDON-The International Energy Agency's long-term forecast that the United States would exceed Saudi Arabia in production led to a clash between the OPEC secretary general, Abdalla El-Badri, and the executive director of the agency, Maria Van der Hoeven, at the Oil and Money Conference convened Tuesday in London by the International Herald Tribune and Energy Intelligence, an energy consultancy.

After a long and inconclusive debate about why oil prices remain high despite plentiful supplies, Ms. Van der Hoeven asserted that Iraq, an OPEC member whose production is growing rapidly, and the U.S. are the “game-changers” now. In other words, they will both put large new supplies of oil into the system over the coming years.

Mr. El-Badri, who had been conciliatory, appeared to lose patience. “Please, don't give this message to the market,” he said. He warned that OPEC states like Saudi Arabia won't invest in more capacity if they don't see a market for their oil. “They don't want to invest in something they don't use,” he said.

Interestingly, another OPEC kingpin, Abdulla Al Attiyah, who masterminded Qatar's rise as a gas power, said the U.S. shale gas boom was a good thing for the gas industry. Consumers used to worry about gas supplies, he said. “Today, shale gas gives trust that the world has 300 years of using gas,” he said.

Read more about energy issues in the IHT Special Report: Oil & Money.

Trouble With Numbers

As careful as we try to be with words, sometimes our eyes glaze over and our brains freeze when we encounter numbers. Just pausing for an extra moment over a number - does this figure make sense? - might be enough to save us from some unfortunate corrections.

Here are a few examples from the last few weeks.

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Correction, 10/3:

The DealBook column on Tuesday, about private equity funds' growing need to get their cash holdings invested, misstated the amount of money that the firms would have to return to investors if it is not invested in the next 12 months. It is $200 billion, not $200 million.

Aaarrgh! The most common and most frustrating numerical error of all. Confusing “million” and “billion” is not a typo - it's wrong by a factor of 1,000, an indication that we weren't thinking about what we were writing. Every reference to millions, billions and trillions should be double-checked, in every story.

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Correction, 10/9 :

An article on Monday about the popularity of carwashes as a fundraising tool for various causes in Phoenix misstated the number of cars per capita. There are about 600 cars for every 1,000 residents, according to the Department of Energy, not one car for every 600 residents.

This flunked the common-sense test. One car for every 600 people? How do they all fit? How does everyone else get around? An editor raised a question, but the reporter mistakenly confirmed the original figure. A quick check of national figures online would have made clear that this wasn't right.

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Correction, 10/12:

A headline on Wednesday about a report by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life outlining changes in Americans' religious affiliations misstated a trend. The percentage of those calling themselves Protestants has sharply declined, not the number of those calling themselves Protestants.

A somewhat more subtle mistake. The wording in the story was cor rect, but the headline confused “percentage” or “portion” with “number”: Study Finds That the Number of Protestant Americans Is in Steep Decline. Be careful of the nuances of numbers when condensing for a headline.

 
More Trouble With Numbers

Sometimes the number problem is not an error, but an omission or a lack of context to help the reader understand the numbers. An interesting sports column (10/16) about plans to renovate a famous English soccer stadium said this:

Liverpool has yet to confirm the capacity of the new-look Anfield, but the consensus seems to be that it will grow by about 15,000 from its current size.

Unfortunately, the story never says what the current capacity is, leaving a gaping hole in the reader's understanding of the situation.

 
In a Word

This week's grab bag of grammar, style and other missteps, compiled with help from colleagues and readers.

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The hosts insult and mock, like Alex Wagner did in recently describing Mr. Romney's trip overseas as “National Lampoon's European Vacation” - a line she borrowed from an Obama spokeswoman.

Avoid this use of “like” as a conjunction. Make it “as Alex Wagner did.”

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Still, the pace of economic activity is short of what's needed to substantially reduce the unemployment rate, now at 7.8 percent and also well below the level of growth typical in this stage of a recovery after a sharp downturn.

We needed a comma after “percent.” Without it, this reads as though the unemployment rate is “also well below…” - not what we meant.

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Sandy is expected to be a strong - perhaps historic - tropical storm that could cause severe coastal flooding, intense wind damage and knock out power to millions of people for days.

The elements in the series are not parallel. One fix: Replace the comma after “flooding” with “and.”

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“It was a stup endously bad decision to hold this race, and the fact that they pulled the plug at the last minute only hurts the very people they tried to help in the first place,” said Alan Vinegrad, a former U.S. Attorney who has run six marathons, including New York City twice.

Style: make it “a former United States attorney.”

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To college students: “Because the president has been spending about a $1 trillion more every year in this country than we are taking in, he is putting debt on you that you didn't even know about. Each man women and child in this country has about $50,000 worth of government debt.”

Assuming “a” was part of the quote, make it “about a trillion dollars more.”

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Each of the three songs written with Mr. Martin and Shellback feel like inside jokes about the squeaky-clean pop of eras past.

Make it “The three songs … all feel like inside jokes” or “Each of the three songs … feels like an inside jo ke.”

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In other scenes, other principals, played by actors, are filmed as if in a documentary, laconically recounting what happened to the camera.

O.K., so what did happen to the camera? (Be careful where you put those prepositional phrases.)

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Some of these investors will succeed, and these lucky few will pay fewer taxes because of the use of these retirement plans, costing the government money that could total billions.

We're referring to the amount, not the number of taxes, so make it “less in taxes.”

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Whether they have gone through formal reparative therapy, most ex-gays agree with its tenets, even as they are rejected by mainstream scientists.

In this case - where the meaning is “regardless of whether” - we needed to say “whether or not.”

It\'s Not Speed Dating. It\'s Job Hunting.

HONG KONG -Two groups of potential partners-each with their own set of criteria and standards-work their way down the line. They size one another up as quickly as possible. Some have high hopes of finding that special spark. Some, bouncing back from rejection, just want to fulfill minimum requirements. Yet others have had to take an honest look in the mirror and lower expectations.

It's not speed dating. It's job hunting.

A special report in the IHT's education pages on Tuesday examines both sides of the issue. New graduates are struggling to find work, especially in suffering Western economies. Meanwhile, employers may have a hard time finding top applicants. Both job-seekers and recruiters are increasingly expected to cross national borders to find what they want.

As Miki Tanikawa reports from Tokyo, Japanese tech firms have had to change their ways to attract, say, that new M.I.T. hotshot. Talented 20somethings have little time for old hierarchical man agement systems. They want English-speaking, multicultural workplaces, as well as exciting projects and more responsibility.

Japanese companies are reaching out to the world. But there are factors that no company can change. Some recruiters expressed a desire to hire more Chinese engineers, but have been blocked for political reasons, as Beijing continues to seethe over a maritime dispute.

Expectations in China have also changed. Young Westerners reading about the country's booming economy might be tempted to buy a one-way ticket to a better job market. A generation ago, a foreign native English speaker with a Western university degree could land at the airport and expect to find decent work. But today, they are competing with many more Chinese- including overseas-educated “returnees”- who are fluently multilingual. Lara Farrar braves the crowds at the Job Fair for Foreigners in Beijing, and discovers that it can be harder than expected for young expats to f ind top positions in their field of study.

Still, a minimally paid job may be better than nothing if the cupboard is bare back home.

Economic news from Europe seems to be getting worse all the time. Christopher F. Schuetze at The Hague looks at the first E.U. benchmark for graduate employability and asks if setting a Continent-wide goal of pairing young people with jobs will actually work.

Sara Hamdan, reporting from the United Arab Emirates, talks to European expatriates who have left home for the Gulf. Manuel Ayas, a Spaniard who has set up his own successful consultancy in Dubai, said he often got requests from his countrymen back home: “I got one today from a 27-year-old with two master's degrees and five years of work experience asking for any job, just anything, even as a waiter,” he said.

Even those with a job realize that they may have to work hard to keep it, which is why many professionals are going back to school.

Kristiano Ang si ts in on a new executive M.B.A. course in Singapore offered by the Insead business school. Here's a typical student: A Japanese lawyer gets on a plane Thursday night in Tokyo, grabs a few hours of sleep before three days of intensive study in Singapore, returns to the airport Sunday night, and is back at his desk Monday morning.

In today's world, it's often a case of try, try again.

Are you a recent graduate looking for work? Or a company seeking that perfect candidate? What are some of the challenges you face?

When a Spouse Is Posted Abroad

Military duty in particular - but also other professions that require people to travel a lot or work away from home for long periods of time- can put serious strains on marriages and family life. If you or your spouse is in such a role, how do you make your family life work?

IHT Quick Read: Nov. 13

NEWS Gen. John Allen, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, is under investigation for “inappropriate communication'' with Jill Kelley, who was seen as a rival for David H. Petraeus's attentions by Paula Broadwell, the woman who had an affair with Mr. Petraeus, officials said. Elisabeth Bumiller reports.

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany sought to reassure Portuguese leaders on Monday that fiscal overhauls would be rewarded with long-term growth and stability. Melissa Eddy and Niki Kitsantonis report.

The European Commission said Monday that it would seek to delay a plan to charge foreign airlines for greenhouse gas emissions for one year. James Kanter reports from Brussels.

The cabinet of China has ordered that all major industrial projects must pass a “social risk assessment” before they begin, a move aimed at curtailing the large and increasingly violent environmental protests of the last year. Keith Bradsher reports from Beijing.

Betting its future on natural gas, Shell is building a giant vessel that will float over a gas field off the coast of Australia, housing a massive processing plant, so that the product can be transported just about anywhere. Stanley Reed reports.

EDUCATION The Emirates have long played a unique role in global recruitment because of a high proportion of foreign workers, and Europeans are increasingly joining the flow. Sara Hamdan reports from Dubai.

FASHION The painter Gustav Klimt is inspiring designers fascinated by the glint of his gilt. Suzy Menkes writes from London.

ARTS Herman Wouk, author of 1950s blockbusters like “The Caine Mutiny” and “Marjorie Morningstar,” returns with a novel made of text messages, e-mails and Skype transcripts. Brooks Barnes reports from Palm Springs, Calif.

SPORTS The National Football League is expanding into China, hoping to become one of the ten most popular sports in the world's most populous nation by the end of the decade. Jonathan Landreth reports from Beijing.

Britain\'s Dilemma: to Extradite or Not to Extradite

A British judge's refusal on Monday to extradite a radical Muslim cleric to Jordan is the latest twist in a string of terror-related extraditions in the U.K. The recent flurry of high-profile extradition cases - some that resulted in extradition, some that did not - has exposed an unsettling randomness at the heart of the country's extradition policy.

Abu Qatada, a Palestinian-born Jordanian believed to have had close ties to Osama bin Laden and other senior Al Qaeda figures, will be set free on bail today after an intense decade-long court battle. “Judge John Mitting ordered Abu Qatada, 52, whose real name is Omar Mahmoud Mohammed Othman, to be released from prison on Tuesday under tight bail conditions,” my colleague John F. Burns reported yesterday.

The judge's ruling was “deeply unsatisfactory,” said Home Secretary Theresa May. As she told the BBC, “Qatada is a dangerous man, a suspected terrorist, who is accused of serious crimes in his home cou ntry of Jordan.” The government had lobbied for Mr. Qatada's removal from Britain for years, saying it had been doing “everything it could to get rid of [him].”

Britain has long struggled with how to balance civil liberties and national security prerogatives, often opting to freed radicalized Muslims whose calls for holy war against the West the government has deemed offensive and dangerous. In 2004, Britain adopted laws to make extradition to the United States easier in the wake of the September 11th attacks. But those laws were later questioned, examined and found, in one report, to be biased.

The British government said it had gone to great lengths to obtain legal assurances from the Jordanians about the treatment Abu Qatada would receive if he were sent home, but the presiding judge ruled against Ms. May and the government, saying that British and Jordanian guarantees were flimsy and did nothing to prevent information about Abu Qatada gleaned through to rture of other suspects from being used in court.

While never formally charged with a crime in the U.K., Mr. Qatada has been in and out of custody and detention for years, and is believed to have been instrumental in plotting bomb attacks in Jordan, where he was convicted in abstentia in 1999.

Ms. May says she plans to take a fresh look at Britain's extradition laws. This could include enacting a measure that would give judges more discretion to extradite if all or part of the alleged criminal activity took place on British soil. Ms. May has also indicated she might want to get rid of the automatic appeal stage that is currently part of the country's extradition policy.

Ms. May has often pushed for extradition, but in mid October another high profile case arose in which she lobbied against it, and won. As my colleague Harvey Morris explained on Rendezvous, Ms. May led the government's decision not to send Gary McKinnon to face trial in the United States. Th e 46-year old Scottish computer hacker admitted to breaking into NASA and Pentagon military computer systems, causing an estimated $800,000 in damage.

While Ms. May said the decision not to extradite the hacker was a “one time event” linked to his health - he has Asperger's Syndrome - she then went on to say she planned to begin a review of pending extradition cases to determine whether a trial in Britain would ultimately be more effective in other instances. The U.K.-based anti-extradition group Liberty said it “welcomed this compassionate and common sense announcement.”

Last month, in yet another high-profile case, the government sent five terrorism suspects to the United States to face trial. Among them was Abu Hamza al-Masri, a one-eyed Egyptian preacher with a lame hand who had been serving time in a British prison since 2006 on charges of incitement to murder for his radical preaching at a London mosque. Abu Hamza now faces 11 charges in a Manhattan Federal District Court ranging from calling for holy war in Afghanistan to attempting to set up a terrorism training camp in Oregon. In that case, Ms. May said British and American authorities worked hand in hand to ensure that Mr. Masri would be “handed over within hours of the court's decision.”

In Beijing, Fire Brigades at the Ready

HONG KONG - Two young Tibetan men killed themselves by fire on Monday in the latest in a series of self-immolations during the Communist Party congress that's now under way in Beijing.

There have been 10 immolations already this month, according to the Tibetan government in exile, news reports and local sources cited by activists. A grisly photograph of one of the immolations Monday is here, on the Web site of Radio Free Asia.

The gruesome deaths by fire - and their effect on international opinion - have clearly registered with the authorities in Beijing. As the leadership has staged its landmark gathering over the past week, security officials in orange jumpsuits have been deployed outside the Great Hall of the People - fire extinguishers at the ready.

As my colleague Andrew Jacobs reported from Beijing, “a New York Times photographer who took pictures of the firefighters was confronted by the police, who forced her to delete the images.”

Off icial reaction at the congress to the self-immolations and the ongoing unrest in Tibet and Tibetan areas of western China has seemed to be a mix of falsehoods, happy talk, anger and defiance.

Foreign reporters were told they should go to Tibet to report directly on the situation there instead of relying on disgruntled locals, dissident monks and various outsiders. Qiangba Puncog, the chairman of Tibet's regional assembly, was quoted by Reuters as telling journalists that the authorities “welcome all of you to go to Tibet to see Tibet's real situation. Listening is false, seeing is believing.”

The notion of free-range reporting trips to Tibet drew laughter and head shakes from foreign journalists at the congress: Western reporters are routinely barred from traveling to Tibet or reporting independently there.

But Qiangba Puncog said agencies with human rights agendas would not be welcome in the region, presumably including Navi Pillay, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights.

Last week, the day after the congress opened in Beijing, Ms. Pillay said she was disturbed by “continuing allegations of violence against Tibetans seeking to exercise their fundamental human rights of freedom of expression, association and religion.”

She made reference to “reports of detentions and disappearances, of excessive use of force against peaceful demonstrators, and curbs on the cultural rights of Tibetans.”

She cited the case of a 17-year-old girl who was “reportedly severely beaten and sentenced to three years in prison for distributing flyers calling for Tibet's freedom and the return of the Dalai Lama.”

She also called on Tibetans to stop the self-immolations.

“I recognize Tibetans' intense sense of frustration and despair which has led them to resort to such extreme means,” she said, “but there are other ways to make those feelings clear. The government also needs to recognize t his, and permit Tibetans to express their feelings without fear of retribution.”

A spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry assailed Ms. Pillay's remarks, saying she should stop interfering in China's internal affairs.
The spokesman, Hong Lei, also blamed the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, for encouraging scores of self-immolations by Tibetans in the past few years.

A report in the official Xinhua news agency, said “the Dalai Lama clique clamorously prettified such activities.”

“The clique has talked black into white, passed the buck to the Chinese government, and made accusations about China's national and religious policies,” Mr. Hong said. “Such despicable behavior with the sacrifice of other people's lives goes against human morals and conscience, and should be severely condemned.”

Foreign reporters covering the party congress were schooled on the government's modernization of Tibet and Tibetan areas, includi ng new roads, airports, schools, medical clinics, power lines and improved housing. Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, has been voted the happiest city in China four out of the last five years.

Alec Ash, a former English teacher in the restive city of Tongren, in Qinghai Province, writes on The Economist's Analects blog, that Beijing's investment in Tibetan areas is “undeniable.”

Tongren is a boom town, with many new high-rise residential and office blocks, which have enriched Tibetan property developers. Schools and hospitals are better funded and equipped, and there is a new center for disease control.

Some of the effects of modernity are more subtly detrimental to Tibetan culture. When Kumbum monastery near Xining, Qinghai's capital, was singled out for tourism, it saw an influx of female Han Chinese tour guides.

The resulting temptation for some of the monks winnowed their numbers, as did some of the other sorts of interference that tour ists and their cash can bring. Rongwo monastery fears the same fate. And all the while, the growth of Tongren attracts more Han immigrants, diluting its historically Tibetan identity.

Lobsang Sangay, the Dalai Lama's political successor, told me earlier this year that the blame for the ongoing self-immolations “lies with the Chinese government and its very hardline, insensitive policies.”

Mr. Sangay, whose official title is kalon tripa, or prime minister, said he and the Dalai Lama were aware of a growing anger and restlessness among many ethnic Tibetans, especially young people, who bridle under the control of the ethnic Han authorities.

But he said he would not veer from the Dalai Lama's policy of the “Middle Way,” the nonviolent pursuit of autonomy for Tibet within China, and the Dalai Lama continues to reject all displays of violence, from hunger strikes to self-immolation.

I.H.T. Special Report: Oil & Money

LONDON - Over two days of special reports, in print and online, the International Herald Tribune is examining how the global energy landscape is shifting in fundamental ways that few would have predicted, and how new opportunities and risks are arising - geopolitical, economic and environmental.

The special reports coincide with a conference in London that the IHT is convening with Energy Intelligence, an energy consultancy, bringing together the top executives in the oil and gas industry, as well as leaders who deal with energy issues in government, academia and the media. The IHT's energy editor, Stanley Reed, and I will be tweeting from the first day of the conference on Tuesday @iht_rdv and #OM2012 and Stanley will be blogging here on RDV.

Tuesday's special print section comes as a new report from the International Energy Agency claims that in five years the United States will be the world's largest oil producer and by 2030 will become a net exporter of oil.

That increased oil production, combined with new American policies to improve energy efficiency, means that the United States will become “all but self-sufficient” in meeting its energy needs in about two decades - a “dramatic reversal of the trend” in most developed countries, the report says.

“The foundations of the global energy systems are shifting,” said Fatih Birol, chief economist at the Paris-based organization, which produces the annual World Energy Outlook, in an interview before the release. The agency, which advises industrialized nations on energy issues, had previously predicted that Saudi Arabia would be the leading producer until 2035.

But as David Goldwyn, a former U.S. State Department special envoy for international energy and assistant secretary of energy, writes in the lead article in the special report, “The reduced U.S. dependence on crude imports does not mean an end to history. The issues of price volatility, diversity of supply and helping U.S. friends and allies to be free from monopolistic pricing or coercive supply arrangements will remain as vital 20 years from now as they are today.”

He says the American oil and gas boom will lead to more jobs and more infrastructure and refining capacity in the United States, but will not end dependency on foreign oil, or American interests being linked to affairs in the turbulent nations where that oil comes from.

Mr. Goldwyn says the controversial shale gas boom (a.k.a. fracking) can lead to environmental and economic benefits globally, if done in an economically sound way, but will require changes in American diplomacy and policy.

Referring to the largest shale deposits in the United States, he writes, “If the technology and project management deployed in the Marcellus, Barnett and Eagle Ford shales can be even partially replicated in Eastern Europe, China and India, the world could see faster greenhouse gas reduction - through substituting gas for coal - at lower cost than any mechanism envisioned by our climate negotiators.”

But the special report lays out in stark relief that the more things change on the global energy landscape, the more they stay the same - especially when it comes to coal.

Dirty, fickle and dangerous, coal may seem an odd contender in a world where promising renewable energy sources like solar, wind and hydroelectric power are attracting attention. Anathema to environmentalists because it creates so much pollution, coal still has the undeniable advantages of being widely available and easy to ship and burn.

The biggest attraction, however, is low cost. By many estimates, including that of Li Junfeng, longtime director general of the National Development and Reform Commission of China, burning coal still costs about one-third as much as using renewable energy like wind or solar.

He predicts within a year or two, coal will surpass oil as the planet's primary fuel.

And coal is not the only fossil fuel experiencing a revival.

Shell is betting more than $10 billion by some estimates on just one facility that will reach and process liquified natural gas where it has never been processed on such a scale before: at sea. Shell is building the world's biggest ship, Prelude, as a floating L.N.G. platform off Australia.

And, in Qatar, Shell “is ramping up production of a facility called Pearl. Not a tiny jewel, Pearl is a sprawling $20 billion network of pipes and tanks designed to perform the alchemy of turning Qatar's matchless natural gas resources into even more valuable diesel and jet fuel.”

Still, Iain Pyle of Bernstein Research in London figures that Shell could make $1 billion a year in net profit. Prelude will produce a lot of gas - more than enough to supply the needs of Hong Kong, for instance, Shell says.

Assuming Prelude works, it should provide Shell with a persuasive talking point when it approaches governments.

Marjan van Loon, a Shell vice president for liquefied natural gas, says Shell wants to build a new floating liquefied natural gas project each year “for the foreseeable decades.”

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Environmentally concerned readers may be asking, “Prelude to what? Earth, dessert planet?”

All of this has a certain Back to the Future element to it. Just a few years ago, many people were talking about a future based on renewable energy as if it were a foregone conclusion.

Indeed, the International Energy Agency report that predicts the United States' rise to leading oil exporter also includes a warning that unchecked energy consumption will have dire consequences for the planet's climate.

“The report confirms that, given the current policies, we will blow past every safe target for emissions,” said Michael Levi, senior fellow for energy and environment at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Now, the energy needs of the industrialized world and the rapidly developing world - as well as the cost associated with building renewable-energy infrastructure amid a global economic crisis and new supplies and technology aimed at fossil fuels lowering the costs of exploiting these forms of energy - have pushed renewables into the background and brought the opportunities of old fuels to the fore.

We'll be discussing these issues - the opportunities and the risks - in the coming days. We hope you'll join the conversation.

Gaudi\'s Casa Mila Gets Reprieve

BARCELONA - With the economic crisis roiling Europe, fears have been growing among cultural observers that cash-strapped countries like Greece, Spain and Italy could sell cultural treasures to avert financial insolvency. In Spain these concerns were fanned in recent weeks after it emerged that Catalunya Caixa, a struggling savings bank that owns the Antoni Gaudi Barcelona masterpiece Casa Milà, could be forced to put that architectural jewel up for sale. There were even rumors that a Russian billionaire wanted to buy the building. But those fears have been allayed after the bank, which was temporarily taken over by the state after going bankrupt, announced last week that it would set up a special foundation to administer Casa Milà and to assure that it would not go to auction. Catalan culture officials said the foundation would have a budget of about 35 million euros, a big chunk of that derived from ticket sales to Casa Milà, a popular tourist destination.

With i ts undulating facade, cavelike balconies and colorful rooftop chimney park, Casa Milà - also known as La Pedrera (the Stone Quarry) - is one of the most imaginative houses in the history of architecture. A Unesco World Heritage Site, it is also a potent symbol of Catalonia and Spain. For many Spaniards selling it would be equivalent to France selling the Eiffel Tower or the United States selling the Statue of Liberty.

Crisis-hit countries across Europe have been considering selling off cultural landmarks  to stay afloat. Italy recently announced plans to put 800 state-owned properties on the market. Mentioned among the possible buildings for sale is the 17th-century Palazzo Barberini in Rome, which houses the National Gallery of Ancient Art. Debt-choked Greece, meanwhile, has announced plans to sell islands and historic real estate, including the Tatoi Palace, the former Greek royal family's estate at the foot of Mount Parnitha.

My Unscientific World Poll of Obama vs. Romney

A whole world has to live with whichever presidential candidate comes to occupy the Oval Office. If everyone else got a vote, it seems, Mitt Romney would not have gotten past the White House rose garden.

A poll for the BBC of 21 countries released before the U.S. presidential election showed that only Pakistanis, outraged at drone missiles, preferred Mr. Romney. The tally was 14 percent to 11 percent. Most respondents wanted neither. Canada went for Barack Obama by two to one. In France, it was 72 percent versus two percent for Mr. Romney.

Beyond the pollsters, I did my own sampling. Nate Silver would double over with laughter at the methodology. But, as a grizzled old reporter, I queried colleagues I know have a feel for their societies.

Peru was typical. Gustavo Gorriti of IDL-Reporteros noted Mr. Obama tallied 75 percent among Americans in Lima and he reckons Peruvians would have voted the same way. He messaged:
“Why? Migration policies, empa thy, sympathy, intelligence and understanding of the world. Opinion of Romney? The stereotypical gringo, hard working, prejudiced, short-sighted, with a dangerous imbalance between might and mind.”

A smart reporter in Hanoi, who asked for anonymity because he is a smart reporter in Hanoi, said most Vietnamese fear Mr. Romney, whose popular local nickname translates to “condor eye.” That is, a warmonger. They think Mr. Obama would do better at balancing the global economy.

Smita Sharma said most pundits on her TV program in New Delhi say “it is easier to deal with a known devil, than an unknown one.” But she said, “There are those Indians who still yearn for the Republican-Bush-Nuclear-Deal-High-Moment.” And some students wanted Mr. Romney to win because of Paul Ryan, his vice presidential partner, whose fresh young look and radical thinking made him appealing.

In the poll for the BBC, two-thirds of Australians chose Mr. Obama. Bill Claiborne, a retired Washington Post correspondent of wide experience, told me: “Australia is a small country on a very large continent but it is more egalitarian than the U.S.…I'd guess it would give a huge part of its vote to Obama. Oddly, it has a clone of Romney (or worse) heading the (conservative) Liberal Party and a quite liberal Labor Party hanging on to a slender majority in Parliament. There was enormous interest in Obama and celebrations after the election. I didn't hear of any rallies for Romney.”

In an upscale suburb of Stockholm, Fredrik Laurin, an investigative reporter, recorded an exchange with his son Malte and a friend, Max, on how Swedes would vote if they could. Both are 10 years old.

Some excerpts:

Max: I think they´d vote for Barack Obama.

Malte: There has been a lot of talk about Mitt Romney, that he cares more about the people who already have a lot of money.

Max: I think he´s rather selfish and only thinks ab out himself.

Malte: Obama cares about all people. He tries to make it good for both rich and poor. His grandmother has been poor herself and was living in one of those cow-dung huts that people live in in Africa. I also heard a lot about that when he was a kid, he wanted to be president. And that all should be equal.

Max: …I think many voted for [Mr. Romney].

Malte: But I don't think he´s good for the people, he thinks more about the ones that already have what they need…For example he says only the rich should have healthcare…I think that before Obama came you had to pay for healthcare in America, but when he came that was changed. You shouldn't have to pay when you go to a hospital.

Max: And all people should have the right to go to school. All should have equal rights.

Both kids said they expect more from a second term.

Malte: Obama has not done all he has promised, for example I don't know that all kids in America can go to school for free. But I think he has done things better. And now that he has won I think he can make sure that everyone can go to school and get health care. If you have a problem with your heart for example you should not have to argue with someone to go to hospital. Then you must be accepted and get an operation. Before he might have thought that he couldn't do it all, but now he can just go for it and make things better. Because then it's over.

Both kids read daily papers, watch TV news and cruise the Internet. Neither one mentioned Big Bird.

Putin Vs. the European Competition Commission

Is Vladimir Putin really going to take on the European Union's Competition Commission? If so, the Kremlin should be careful that it has not bitten off more than it can chew.

The Commission and Russia's Gazprom are now at loggerheads, as I explain in my latest Letter from Europe. At issue is how Gazprom, Russia's state-owned energy company, allegedly abused its powerful position in Eastern and Central Europe by blocking competition.

The decision by DG Competition, as the Directorate General for Competition is known, to go after Gazprom is important for what is says about the Commission and what it means for Russia.

The Competition Commission is fiercely committed to fair competition. Remember how it challenged Microsoft. It also challenged Europe's most powerful energy companies, especially in France and Germany over how they had sewn up the energy sector.

At one stage, say energy experts, DG Competition had such damning evidence of the big German en ergy companies abusing their market position that it proposed to make the reports public unless the companies changed their ways. The threat worked. Germany now has a competitive and open energy sector.

Gazprom is one of the last remaining energy companies on DG Competition's list. While the company held a tight grip over the energy sector throughout most of Eastern Europe, in Western Europe, where it has subsidiaries, Gazprom has had to play by the rules in an increasingly competitive sector.

What these antitrust proceedings against Gazprom mean for Russia is another matter. Mr. Putin, so far, is standing firm.

But if - and this is a big if - Russia is serious about modernization, surely the Commission's proceedings are a push in the right direction. After all, say analysts, modernization is not just about upgrading the country's infrastructure. It is also about the rule of law, transparency and competition.

“It's just so hard to tell if this case could be a tool for modernization,” said Szymon Kardas, a Russian expert at the Center for Eastern Studies in Warsaw. “There is already a debate amongst the Russia elites about how modernization would affect the Kremlin's control over strategic sectors, such as energy.”

All the more reason to keep track of DG Competition's proceedings against Gazprom.

Making the Bike as Logic a Choice for Commuters as the Car, Bus, Train or Metro

What do you give the bike city that has it all? Better bicycle highways and parking lots, obviously.

In fact, the capital of European biking - in a bike-obsessed Europe - is investing nearly "120 million, or about $150 million, in cycling infrastructure over the next eight years, with almost half of that sum be spent in just the next four years.

“Amsterdam wants to remain a clean and accessible city and the city administration had to ensure the conditions are set for people to be able to choose their bike as a means of transportation,” Tahira Limon of the City of Amsterdam in a telephone interview.

Amsterdam is not the first European city to make headlines for improved bike infrastructure this year. Even during Europe-wide belt tightening, some cities are spending heavily on two-wheeled transportation infrastructure. My colleague Sally McGrane reported on a new bicycle superhighway in Copenhagen, which officially opened in spring.

“Cycling is not a goal in itself but a way to create a more livable and green city with healthier citizens and should be perceived as a ‘normal' means of transportation in line with the car, bus, train and Metro,” wrote Anja Larson of the City of Copenhagen in an email.

“Cycling is the most cost-effective way to move people,” said Julian Ferguson of the European Cyclists' Federation, or the ECF, about public and private transport systems.

It is also becoming increasingly popular. Cities as diverse as London, Paris, Barcelona, Lyon and New York have doubled their bike share trips in the last decade, according to ECF.

The city of Amsterdam already has more bikes than people. According to city data, 780,559 citizens live in a city of 881,000 bicycles.

Currently 58 percent of all Amsterdam's citizens use their bikes on a daily basis, with 43 percent using their bikes for their daily commute.

One downside to the massive popularity of bikes is an increase in accidents as more bikers share the same bike lines. Amongst people seriously wounded in traffic accidents, 56 percent in Amsterdam are cyclists, up from 48 percent in 2000.

The boost in bike ridership has also led to enormous bike parking problems, as anyone who has tried to lock up his or her bike close to a Dutch train station can attest.

The massive funding boost will be spent on upgrading bike routes and enhancing bicycle storage, the city said when announcing its plans last month.

Amsterdam will fund some 38,000 additional bike parking places at many of the city's railroad and public transportation hubs, as well as other popular sites such as the Museum. Most impressive, perhaps, is the plan to build a new indoor storage place that by 2020 can fit up to 17,500 bikes close to the central train station.

In addition to the extra spaces, the city will create more bike parking laws and enforce existing ones, ensuring Amsterdammers do not leave the ir bikes for longer than 14 days in at high-demand locations.

Also Amsterdam bike paths will be widened and enhanced.

This video produced by BicycleDutch, a popular blog documenting the country's bike culture, documents the rise of Dutch cycling infrastructure:

Copenhagen, currently Europe's second major bike city, has the ambitious goal of getting 50 percent of all commuters on bikes by 2015. According to Copenhagen City figures, the rate is closer to 35 percent now.

Projects like the bike superhighway are funded by a yearly budget of some 75 million Danish kroner, or nearly $13 million. Copenhagen is also investing in a public awareness campaign.  A website called Copenhagenize gives the estimated count of kilometers cycled by citizens of the Danish capital each day.

What do you think? Is your city putting enough thought and money into bike infrastructure? Would you bike more if there was better infrastructure?

IHT Quick Read: Nov. 12

NEWS A tentative agreement among the Syrian opposition was signed to create an umbrella organization that could pave the way for long-elusive international diplomatic recognition. Neil MacFarquhar reports.

F.B.I. agents recognized the stakes of any investigation tied to David H. Petraeus, the C.I.A. director who resigned Friday, but were wary of exposing a private affair with no criminal or security implications. Scott Shane and Charlie Savage report from Washington.

As controversy swirls around the failure of former Greek finance ministers to investigate a list of 2,000 suspected tax dodgers, the government in Athens is taking a hard look at the foreign assets of those people and thousands of others. Landon Thomas Jr. reports.

The BBC's chairman said Sunday that the broadcasting organization was in a “ghastly mess” as a result of its bungled coverage of a decades-old sexual abuse scandal and in need of a fundamental shake-up. John F. Burns repo rts from London.

China's government extolled the fruits of 10 years of reform in its cultural sector on Sunday, saying it had privatized thousands of publishing companies, newspapers and cultural groups while promoting industries that can spread China's influence abroad - all firmly under party control. Ian Johnson reports from Beijing.

EDUCATION As a special adviser to the secretary general of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Andreas Schleicher has the attention of policy makers in the world's wealthiest countries. Mr. Schleicher has changed the way countries think about what goes on in their classrooms, D.D. Guttenplan writes from Paris.

When the doors open next autumn at the Paris campus of Parsons the New School for Design, the program will be both the oldest and newest overseas branch of an American university. D.D. Guttenplan writes from Paris.

ARTS The evolution of cooking tools is the theme of a new book, “Consider the Fork,” by the British historian Bee Wilson. Alice Rawsthorn on design.

SPORTS Manchester United is back on top of the English league principally because of the instincts of two men - one a 70-year-old Scot, the other a 24-year-old Mexican. Rob Hughes on soccer.

In Argentina's first match after its debut season in the Southern Hemisphere's Rugby Championship, Los Pumas beat Wales, 26-12, in their best performance ever on British soil. Huw Richards reports from Cardiff, Wales.

What Party Congress? On \'Singles Day,\' China Said to Surpass U.S. Cyber Sales

BEIJING - In China on Sunday, as the leaders huddled, the people shopped. A lot.

Nov. 11 may have been the fourth day of the week-long 18th Party Congress which is choosing, in secret, a party Central Committee and the future leaders of the country's 1.35 billion people. But it was also Singles Day - an unofficial festival that Chinese say is unique in the world, marked by furious shopping, often online, for anything from winter clothes to jewelry to cars, for those either celebrating or bemoaning their single status.

For the government, which is spooked by falling economic growth rates as it negotiates a delicate political transition, the consumption boom - even if just for one day - is a boon.

The origins of what is known in Chinese as “Guanggun jie,” or, literally, “Bare Branch Festival” (guanggun also means bachelor), are somewhat mysterious, but reportedly date back to a charmingly low-key, local story: the uneventful lives of four single, ma le, Chinese university students in the 1990s, as a blogger on the social networking site Renren.com explains in a bilingual entry called “Lu Zhenxing's Diary.” (Does anyone else feel a movie script stirring?)

“An old story goes that once there were four single men, leading very boring lives. None of them were married, or had lovers, or did anything exciting. They just sat around all day and played Mahjong,” Lu Zhenxing's Diary narrates.

“One day they played Mahjong from 11 in the morning until 11 at night,” it runs. The four numerals, added together, perfectly represented their plight: four single men. And the date was 11.11. It was all too good to be true, and “These college students have since graduated, and carried their university tradition into society,” Lu Zhenxing's Diary notes, with celebrations among the unmarried beginning in Nanjing, a former capital where one of the country's most famous universities, Nanjing University, is located, in the 1990s. “Singles Day is now a special day for all fashionable youths,” the diary notes.

The story can't be proven, but either way, it's a welcome boost for the government, which is pushing for an upsurge in domestic consumption as China's economy has plunged, as my colleague Keith Bradsher writes.

The Associated Press reported that in the first 13 hours of business on Sunday, merchants on Tmall.com, which is owned by online giant Alibaba, took in a whopping 10 billion renmimbi, or $1.6 billion.

That would top the $1.25 billion that research firm comScore said online retailers in the United States took last year on Cyber Monday, the Monday after Thanksgiving, and might make Singles Day the biggest e-commerce sales day on record, the A.P. wrote.

“This is very, very big for us,” Steve Wang, vice president of Tmall.com and head of website operations, said, and Sunday might be the “biggest e-shopping orgy ever,” the company said on its Webs ite. China has 193 million online shoppers, more than the 170 million in the United States - and the number is only growing, the A.P. wrote.

Yet while some single Chinese people were celebrating their status, others felt highly ambiguous about it.

“The main way to celebrate Singles Day is to have dinner with your single friends, but it's important that each person pay their own way to show their independence,” the diary noted.

But, “People also hold ‘blind date' parties in an attempt to bid goodbye to their single lives,” it continued. “Some people will use this date and this meaning to tell their special someone that they are the only ‘one' in their heart.” And, with that, presumably exit the ranks of those shopping up a storm on that day.

The Second Term Anti-Role Model: Bush

WASHINGTON - President George W. Bush continues to pay for his second term.

The exit polls in last week's U.S. presidential election found that voters, by 53 to 38 percent, thought Mr. Bush was more responsible for the current economic difficulties than President Barack Obama.

Mr. Bush was a pariah on the campaign trail this year. He didn't appear at the Republican's convention in Tampa, Florida and wasn't even mentioned there in speeches by the nominee, Mitt Romney, the vice presidential candidate, Paul Ryan, or the keynote speaker, Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey. About the only convention attention Mr. Bush received was from the Democrats, when his predecessor, Bill Clinton, offered mild praise for his support for AIDS funding in Africa.

In my latest column, I point out the many parallels between the ways Mr. Bush and Mr. Obama won their second terms, and I ask: “Can Obama Avoid Bush's 2nd-Term Errors?” The long-lasting impact of those err ors were manifest in this campaign.

Mr. Romney went out of his way to stress how different he is from George W. Bush, although their policies on tax cuts and deregulation seemed almost identical.

The former Republican president's problems date back to the first year after his 2004 re-election. Miscalculating, the White House decided to focus on an overhaul of Social Security, without gathering any Democratic support. The proposal went
nowhere and the political damage was considerable.

He then rushed back to Washington to sign legislation allowing the federal government to prevent a Florida man from removing the feeding tubes of his wife, who was in a persistent vegetative state. Ultimately, that too was thwarted and an autopsy showed she was severely brain damaged.

Finally, when hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, Mr. Bush was AWOL.

Mr. Bush might take some solace from President Harry Truman, who left office in 1953 even more unpo pular than Mr. Bush is. Today, Mr. Truman is considered one of the great presidents. Then again, there's the Republican Herbert Hoover who left office in 1933. More than three decades later, Democrats are still successfully running against his polices.

Off Script at China\'s 18th Party Congress

BEIJING - As China's 18th Communist Party Congress moved into the weekend, a key part of the show was in full swing - meetings of party delegations from each province and key groups such as central government bodies. The provincial meetings are normally scripted affairs, attended by some of the men (and the top provincial leaders, like the national ones, are virtually all men,) who will be the future national leaders.

Yet, brief media question-and-answer sessions at the end of the meetings can produce moments of startling clarity, and some embarrassment, for powerful officials normally shielded from critical questioning.

On Friday afternoon, one delegation was hit by a frank question from an 11-year-old girl who wanted to know when she could safely eat snacks again, the South China Morning Post reported. China is roiled by food safety scandals including poisoned milk. recycled edible oils, carcinogenic food dyes and the persistently heavy use of pesticides, oft en banned ones, causing major public discontent.

(For more on the congress, including President Hu Jintao's call for
“no old path, no foreign models,” see this report by the state-run
Global Times.)

Here's what the SCMP said, in a story that is behind a paywall:

An 11-year-old reporter's unexpectedly pointed question about
poisoned food left some top party ministers dumbstruck and embarrassed yesterday, shaking up an otherwise tightly scripted 18th party congress event.

Sun Luyuan , a grade-six pupil representing the Chinese Teenagers News, asked officials gathered for a key group meeting how the country's food safety record had got so bad that she and her classmates could no longer eat snacks.

I love snacks, but I don't dare to eat snacks now and neither do my classmates, as there are so many poisoned foods on the market,' the Beijing girl said. “So my question to all the minister-level uncles and aunties is: how can we children eat foods without concern?”

As the SCMP reported: “The question broke the otherwise lethargic atmosphere in the meeting room as officials suddenly straightened in their seats.”

Yet if the question was a shocker, the responses were less illuminating. The education minister, Yuan Guiren, delivered “a stock answer,” noting that food safety was “a global concern and that problems occur sometimes,” the SCMP reported. “We have prepared a series of oversight systems to guarantee food safety,” he said.

“Sun said she was happy with the answer and would pass it to her
anxious classmates. She said she chose the question on her own after reading about so many food safety scandal stories.”

“‘I believe the ministers will find a solution, and yes, I'm
optimistic,” Ms. Sun said.

There was another unscripted moment on Friday at the Hunan province meeting, when a Hong Kong-based reporter from Asia T elevision asked the Hunan party secretary, Zhou Qiang, about the controversial death in his province in June of Li Wangyang, a democracy activist who had spent two decades in jail and was found hanging, his feet touching the floor, in a hospital room shortly after giving an interview to Hong Kong television in which he vowed to continue his struggle for democracy in China.

It's important to know that Mr. Zhou, 52, is considered a possible
candidate for a top national post in the next, or sixth, generation of
leaders set to assume power in 2022, having served as the head of the Communist Youth League, a post previously occupied by the president, Hu Jintao, as well as Li Keqiang, who is tapped to enter the Standing Committee of the Politburo next week and become prime minister for the 5th generation. Hunan province has a population of 65 million and GDP in 2011 of 1.9 billion renminbi or $304 million.

I headed to the Hunan province meeting to observe Mr. Zh ou.
Inside the Hunan Room (each province has a room named after it,) a showy, white-and-gold space with heavy, glistening chandeliers and a giant painting of a striding Mao Zedong surrounded by crowds â€" Mao was a Hunan native â€" Mr. Zhou took six questions. The first four were from “friendly” media, including the People's Daily and Xinhua News Agency.

Their questions dwelled on economic, environmental and legal issues. Then independent Hong Kong and Taiwan correspondents began shouting for a turn. Mr. Zhou, who has heavy, crescent-shaped eyebrows and speaks smoothly, seeming to handle awkward situations with wit, agreed, laughing.

But the window of opportunity was small â€" just three minutes were
allocated to two questions from Taiwan and Hong Kong media. (The first four questions had taken up about half an hour.) Though I had my arm raised, I was not picked.

Mr. Zhou said little. Asked by a Taiwan reporter about talk of his promotion, he de livered a stock answer: “What we're talking about today is the provincial work report. I am a local Hunan leader, and my job is to continue to do Hunan local work well.”

About Mr. Li, the deceased democracy activist, he said: “Hunan police invited the most famous domestic forensics experts and investigation administrators, and they have made their evaluation, we've already made our criminal report, and all the conclusions are on our Web site, I suggest you visit the Hunan province Web site, the report is very detailed, very expert.”

The Hunan government says that Mr. Li committed suicide, while others, especially in Hong Kong, suspect murder. For more, read this by my colleague in Beijing, Andrew Jacobs.

Then reporters were ushered outside. Returning a few minutes later to fetch a forgotten coat, I discovered a very different atmosphere. The stiffness had departed with the media. Officials were chatting freely, their body language morphed from wary to relaxed.

Perhaps the real business was beginning. Leaving the first time, a Hunan official had grasped my arm and pushed me towards the exit. This time, another official shooed me out, with hurried hand gestures.

Can a \'Buy French\' Campaign Save French Jobs?

LONDON - French consumers are being urged to choose products made in France as a patriotic response to the country's economic travails.

As part of a strategy to cut imports and boost national industry, the government is encouraging shoppers to read the label before they buy.

“ ‘Made in France' has never been so fashionable,” according to Le Nouvel Observateur's Challenges magazine in an article that coincided with the launch on Friday what is reportedly the first major exhibition showcasing “Buy in France.”

With the economy flagging, and hourly manufacturing costs 20 percent higher than the European average, President François Hollande and his administration have been pushing to boost domestic industry, the French news agency AFP reported as the show opened.

Last month, Arnaud Montebourg, the minister for industrial renewal, called for supermarket chains to introduce exclusive “Made in France” shelves in their stores.

Mr. Monteb ourg became the poster boy of the campaign when he posed for the Parisien magazine in a French-made matelot top, wearing a French-made watch and holding a French-made blender.

The French appear to like his idea. Seventy-eight percent of respondents told pollsters they backed the supermarket proposal and two-thirds said they would be prepared to pay more for an item made in France.

Appeals to patriotic consumerism are nothing new. The British government launched the first of periodic “Buy British” campaigns in 1931 in response to a balance of payments crisis.

And President Charles de Gaulle once urged the French to drink more milk and less wine, an initiative that rapidly sank without a trace.

Ed Miliband, Britain's Labour Party opposition leader, pushed a “Made in Britain” message in a speech in March in which he said: “We should not be embarrassed about the need for more patriotism in our economic policy.”

Conscious of the risk of a lienating voters, however, he assured British shoppers: “This is not about making consumers feel bad if they don't buy products from British business.”

In times of economic crisis, every little bit helps. But will these campaigns and others actually have an effect?

The report in Challenges cautioned that a ‘Made in France' label did not necessarily mean what it said. It carried no legal guarantee that a product was domestically produced.

Within the European Union, it noted, there is no obligation to specify the country of origin of anything other than food products.

Fabienne Delahaye, who is running the “Made in France” show, told the magazine: “There are always big brands who take advantage of the rules to give the impression their goods are made in France when they're actually made in China.” (And sometimes assembled in French.)

She was nevertheless backing the campaign “because you can't buy abroad and keep jobs in France.”< /p>

“Every year the country exports "350 millions worth of toys and imports "1.5 billion-worth,” she said. “We're impoverishing the country in order to give gifts to our children.”

Is patriotic consumerism an answer to Europe's problems or is it a political gimmick to show governments are doing something? And would you back similar campaigns in your own country? Let us know.