Short Cuts (VIII)

Time waits for no one, week comes to an end and here you have more short readings for the weekend:

1. 70 years ago, on April 26th of 1937, the Condor Legion, then commanded by Hitler, indiscriminately bombed a small town in the Basque Country called Gernika with the approval of Franco. It was the first time civilians were the main target of military actions... the horrible scenes led Picasso to paint one of his most famous paintings (in the picture).

2. Watch out if you drive in Africa! According to the latest WHO report entitled Youth and safety:

Africa's roads are by far the world's most dangerous with more than 24 in
every 100,000 of the continent's population dying on them annually

So, now we can say that investing in infrastructure not only promotes economic growth but also implies important savings in terms of lives!

3. In this short piece from The Washington Post Bill Easterly offers his views on the actual situation of the World Bank. According to him, the Wolfowitz's affair is just only another problem to add to the structural ones. It's worth a reading!

4. Boris Yeltsin died this week. He was in command of Russia while the "dark" processes of privatisation took place. Stiglitz wrote a lot about this issue in his Globalization and its Discontents.

5. Yes... Rodrik has recently set up his own blog!