Business & management:
• The 4th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey “Smart growth and urban consolidation: the high social and economic costs” is available in full.
• The Public Relations Institute of New Zealand says the increase in public relations and communications staff in NZ reflects worldwide growth in the industry.
• The amount that NZers spend on travel within NZ has risen by nearly $1 billion over the last year, to about $8 billion a year.
Environment & sustainability:
• Celsias, the Wellington-based environmental web hub site and company, is to attend the prestigious DEMO ’08 invitation-only technology event in California next week.
• The EU has released a series of proposals that will increase the use of renewable energy and set legally enforceable targets for governments to achieve them.
• The World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting for 2008 has been told that water stress (ie the escalating demand for fresh water) poses a risk to economic growth, human rights, health, safety and national security.
• A UK dairy farmer is planning to build a renewable energy centre that will produce enough energy to ensure that the local town of Tiverton is independent of fossil fuels by 2013.
• NZ has ranked 7th in the 2008 Environmental Performance Index, released at the World Economic Forum meeting – the performance of the US is described by the Yale compilers as a “national disgrace”.
Health & wellbeing:
• The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence is advising town planners in the UK to give pedestrians and cyclists priority over cars in towns, as a means of combating a sedentary lifestyle.
Law & Government:
• A small group in London have taken a novel approach to improving an aspect of public policy in a very informal way, using a “barcamp”.
• Plans for the “community contracts” have been launched in the UK, raising the possibility that residents could win a rebate on their council tax if their local authority repeatedly fails to collect rubbish or tackle yobbish behaviour.
People, culture & diversity:
• The new war of the sexes is the “Daddy War”, where men who’ve been deprived of their role as a breadwinner, compete with their partners over childcare.
• Some students re-assess how damaging their social networking sites can be to their job prospects as they start to apply for their first jobs – employers overseas are increasingly using searches on such sites to assess applicants. But cleaning up your online image and removing a profile completely from a social networking site may not be that easy.
Science, technology & transport:
• A New York City Transportation commission is considering whether to introduce a charge on drivers entering New York City, in a similar way to the charge introduced for central London.
• A UK company is using the sewer system to provide super-fast broadband in some towns of 100 Mbps (megabits per second).
Friday, 25 January 2008
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