How road behaviour correlates with trust in government. In the first half of the 20th century, London grew rather a lot. Its official government, however, grew not at all. The result was that, by the 1950s, the city's built up area had achieved a fairly similar form to the one it has today – but the County of London was trapped behind broadly the same boundaries it had held since 1889, and vast swathes of the inner suburbs (Stratford, Acton, Willesden, Tottenham) were left outside.
How modern London was broken up before 1965. The pink area in the middle was the 28 metropolitan boroughs included in London County Council. Image: Wikimedia Commons. So, in 1957, the Macmillan government appointed a Commission to review how London was governed, under the chairmanship of Sir Edwin Herbert. I've not been able to find a decent map of the Commission’s review area, but the list of councils it covered suggests it looked a lot like the area now enclosed within the M25.
A very rough map. Another very rough map. To be precise, 52 London boroughs. Anyway. California Considers a Universal 401(k) retirement plan. California thinks it has a solution to Americans’ woeful preparation for retirement: a near-universal 401(k) plan. The state legislature on Monday received recommendations from a state board related to the creation of the California Secure Choice Retirement Plan—in essence a 401(k) plan operated by the state that’s available to private-sector employees whose employers don’t provide a retirement savings plan.
Access to a 401(k) is typically dependent on landing a job with an employer that chooses to offer one. Americans without that option can set up their own individual retirement accounts, but few manage to do so. According to the National Institute on Retirement Security, 45% of working-age households—some 40 million—do not own any retirement account assets, whether in an employer-sponsored 401(k) type plan or an IRA. Likewise, in May, the Federal Reserve found that 31% of non-retirees have no retirement savings or pension, including nearly a quarter of those older than 45. Study Finds 3 Laws Could Reduce Firearm Deaths by 90% Even though over 90 people are killed by guns in the United States every day, gun-control legislation remains a hotly contested and divisive topic. A new nationwide study, however, has added to the debate by presenting evidence that suggests gun deaths in the US could be reduced by over 90% with the implementation of federal laws mandating firearm identification through microstamping or ballistic fingerprinting, and universal background checks for firearm and ammunition purchases.
According to the study’s model, a federal law expanding background checks for all gun purchases could reduce the national gun death rate by 57%, lowering it from 10.35 to 4.46 per 100,000 people while background checks for all ammunition purchases could lower the rate by 81% to 1.99 per 100,000 and firearm identification could reduce it by 83% to 1.81 per 100,000.
Meta Editorial Team. Japan and the whale. Hunting whales is irrelevant to feeding Japan's population, draws global condemnation and is certainly not economic. So why does Japan still do it? The answer from the Japanese government is that whaling is an ancient part of Japanese culture, that fishermen have caught whales for centuries, and that Japan will never allow foreigners to tell its people what they can and cannot eat. One Japanese official once said to me: "Japanese people never eat rabbits, but we don't tell British people that they shouldn't". I pointed out that rabbits are not exactly an endangered species. Image copyright Getty Images Image copyright AFP Still, there is some merit to the government's argument. A number of coastal communities in Japan have indeed hunted whales for centuries, and continue to do so.
So, yes, coastal whaling is part of Japanese culture, like Norway and Iceland and the Inuit of northern Canada. Nothing about these Antarctic whaling expeditions is historic. For a year Japan stopped. Denmark's prime minister says Bernie Sanders is wrong to call his country soc... Bernie Sanders has long referred to himself as a socialist rather than a member of the Democratic Party, which has naturally lead to a lot of questions about what socialism means to him. He consistently references the social models of the Nordic states — and especially Denmark — as his idea of what democratic socialism is all about.
But in a speech Friday evening at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, Danish Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen said that while he's flattered to see Denmark discussed in a widely-watched US presidential debate he doesn't think the socialist shoe fits. "I know that some people in the US associate the Nordic model with some sort of socialism," he said, "therefore I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Watch it here: This is not especially different, as a substantive matter, from what Sanders is saying. Catalonia's push for independence from Spain - BBC News. Media playback is unsupported on your device Spain has imposed direct rule on Catalonia in response to the restive north-eastern region's most dramatic bid yet for independence. Catalan leaders have been remanded in prison or have fled into exile since the regional parliament declared an independent republic in October.
The sight of police beating voters and politicians being jailed revived disturbing memories, for some, of Spain's authoritarian past. However, Madrid insists the roll-back of autonomy is only temporary, and much rides on an early election in the region on 21 December. How did we get here? Catalonia is one of Spain's wealthiest and most productive regions and has a distinct history dating back almost 1,000 years. Before the Spanish Civil War it enjoyed broad autonomy but that was suppressed under Gen Francisco Franco's dictatorship from 1939-75. Recession and cuts in public spending fuelled local resentment, which coalesced in a powerful secessionist movement. Image copyright EPA. Study links U.S. political polarization to TV news deregulation - Library of ...
Increasing American political polarization is linked to television news deregulation following the federal Telecommunications Act of 1996, according to a Washington State University study. “After 1996, we see changes in polarization based on how much television people are using,” said researcher Jay Hmielowski, assistant professor in WSU’s Edward R. Murrow College of Communication. He conducted the study with Murrow colleague Myiah Hutchens and former colleague Michael Beam, now at Kent State University. Their work was recently published online in the International Journal of Public Opinion Research ( The telecommunications act sought to open markets to competition, but the result was consolidation.
Scholars and pundits have voiced concern that the U.S. government has become increasingly inept at solving important problems. Story source: Press release from Washington State University Like this: Like Loading... Men who explain things. I still don't know why Sallie and I bothered to go to that party in the forest slope above Aspen. The people were all older than us and dull in a distinguished way, old enough that we, at 40-ish, passed as the occasion's young ladies. The house in Colorado was great -- if you like Ralph Lauren-style chalets: a rugged luxury cabin at 9,000 feet, complete with elk antlers, lots of kilims, and a wood-burning stove. We were preparing to leave when our host said, "No, stay a little longer so I can talk to you. " He was an imposing man who'd made a lot of money in advertising or something like that.
He kept us waiting while the other guests drifted out into the summer night, and then sat us down at his grainy wood table and said to me, "So? I hear you've written a couple of books. " I replied, "Several, actually. " He said, in the way you encourage your friend's 7-year-old to describe flute practice, "And what are they about? " He cut me off soon after I mentioned Muybridge. So, Mr. The Death of Reddit - How not to build a community. [edit July 12: when you’re done here, I wrote a followup for you: Fixing or Replacing Reddit, some quick thoughts — take a look!
Chuq] Two or three times a year I get asked why I don’t use Reddit, typically from someone telling me about all of the great stuff on it. They’re right, there are a lot of interesting communities and activities that happen on Reddit and a lot of people doing good and interesting things… But. My favorite visualization of online communities is the community bar. To carry this visualization to Reddit, what you have is a really large, multi-floor building with a large ground-floor common space and a huge bar area filled with a wide variety of people. Reddit, however, has a basement, and in all honesty, the owners of this building would prefer nobody look down there, because again, it’s a big space full of community rooms as well, but down there are the groups Reddit feel are part of the community but would prefer most of us would stay avoid.
So Reddit is a cluster. Syrian girl thought the photojournalist was holding a weapon, so she "surrend... China's loans to Latin America 'rose to $22bn in 2014' 26 February 2015Last updated at 09:48 ET China lent Brazil more than $8bn in 2014, according to new figures released on Thursday Loans by China's state-owned banks to Latin American countries rose by 71% to $22bn (£14bn) in 2014, according to estimates published by the China-Latin America Finance Database.
The figure is the second largest on record for Chinese lending in Latin America, according to the report. The Chinese loans exceed the combined worth of those by the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, the authors say. Brazil alone received $8.6bn, they say. It was followed by Argentina with $7bn, Venezuela with $5.7bn and Ecuador with $821m, according to the report by US think-tank Inter-American Dialogue and Boston University's Global Economic Government Initiative.
Report authors Kevin P Gallagher and Margaret Myers say Chinese finance is particularly popular with Latin American governments because it "comes with few strings attached". How the LAPD Got Smart and Started Winning the War Against Street Gangs. The Los Angeles Police Department may have won the fight against street gangs — at least in some critical ways, and at least for the time being. Police statistics — in addition to analyses by experts and advocates on the ground — suggest that gang violence on LA's streets has dramatically decreased.
The city's most dangerous communities are markedly safer today than they have been at any point in the past 30 years. "It's like night and day," gang expert and author Sam Quinones told VICE News. "Really, it's a remarkable change. " The story of the city's turnaround — widely credited to a combination of new policing strategies started by former LAPD chief Bill Bratton and the work of community organizations focused on preventing gang recruitment — could serve as a model to cities across the country, police and experts told VICE News. The progress can be measured in part by LA's annual body count. "Gangs have not vanished, but they have changed their fundamental nature," Quinones said.