This year the Honduran legislature has taken the first big steps towards the creation of what it called “special development regions”. It has passed a constitutional amendment making them possible and approved a “constitutional statute” that creates their autonomous legal framework. Mauritius has just announced that it will allow its supreme court to hear cases from the new entities (beyond that, in a relic of colonialism, is Britain’s Privy Council, to which the decisions of the island state’s supreme court can be appealed). And on December 6th Porfirio Lobo, the Honduran president, appointed the first members of the “transparency commission”, the body that will oversee the new entities’ integrity.
More fundamentally, Mr Romer argues, when people vote with their feet to come and live in a charter city, they opt in to its rules, in a way that makes possible a new form of governance: neither authoritarian nor (at least initially) fully democratic. Migration to Britain gives the legal system there legitimacy in the eyes of those who move there, even if they cannot vote. If the English legal system were enforced on the same person in his home country, Mr Romer notes, that would be colonial rule.
Doing away with new autonomous entities or even changing their framework will require a two-thirds majority in the country’s congress and the passage of a referendum by the cities’ inhabitants. But the Honduran charter cities will remain legally intertwined with the local judicial system. Although nominated by the cities’ governing authorities, judges must be approved by a two-thirds majority in the Honduran legislature. Lawmakers will also need to ratify the region’s laws, albeit only by a simple majority to say yes or no.
Perhaps the most important feature of the new venture is the “transparency commission”, a kind of board of trustees that appoints the governors, supervises their actions and is meant to make sure that the entities are beyond reproach, not least when it comes to the corruption (often fuelled by the drugs trade) that plagues the region.
最も重要な特徴は，トランスバランシー委員会の存在で，首長を任命し，自治機関を監視する。
In other areas, Mr Romer’s original ideas have prevailed. At least one new region will be big―about the size of Hong Kong (some 1,000 square kilometres). Most revenues will not come from taxes (which are capped at 12% for individuals and 16% for corporations) but from leasing land to investors. And democracy will be introduced gradually. Only when the transparency commission deems that the time is ripe will citizens be able to elect the members of the “normative councils”―in effect, local parliaments.
Much will depend on the transparency commission. The first batch of members appointed this week comprises George Akerlof, another economist and Nobel laureate; Nancy Birdsall, formerly at the Inter-American Development Bank, who now runs the Centre for Global Development, a think-tank; Ong Boon Hwee, a former senior executive at Temasek Holdings and Singapore Power; and Harry Strachan, an investor who used to run INCAE, a leading Latin American business school, with Mr Romer himself in the chair.
The commission’s first job is to fill all of its nine seats. Then the hard work will start, first on investigating whether any foul play has already taken place: rumours are circulating that insiders have bought land in or near Trujillo and other potential sites. Next comes helping pick the regions’ locations and choosing developers in a way that inspires confidence not suspicion. The Honduran agency for public-private partnerships has already signed several memoranda of understanding with firms including South Korea’s Posco and two start-ups with libertarian leanings (see article).
Then there is the general population. The regions are supposed to be open to anybody, but the inflow of people may have to be controlled. What is more, success or failure will depend not just on good rules, as in laws, but on the social norms that are established by its first inhabitants, explains Mr Romer. The key, he says, is to begin with a core of people who share certain new norms―rather as when William Penn attracted people to Pennsylvania who were committed to his charter’s legal promise of freedom of religion. Once the norms are well established in a community, subsequent immigrants will adapt to them.
Last, but not least, comes security. Private security firms will have to protect the population in the new cities. Honduras is one of the world’s more corrupt countries, in 129th place out of 183 in a survey of outsiders’ perceptions by Transparency International, a Berlin-based lobby group. It also has the region’s highest murder rate. The local police have a poor reputation. Last month 176 police officers were arrested in a corruption crackdown
Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia says it has shipped the 1.5 billionth phone running its S40 operating system.
S40オペレーションシステムの乗るケータイが15億台に達したというんですな。膨大な数で。
What is "S40"?
S40 is the platform that Nokia runs on its feature phone handset models. Unlike S60, it does not run on top of the Symbian OS, but rather runs on a fully proprietary system. Formerly known as Series 40, the system generally only allows the user to install Java based applications instead of the native applications that can be installed by users of S60 devices.
History
Series 40 was official introduced in 1999 with the released of the Nokia 7110.
Scale business
Last October, when the company launched its new flagship phone, the Lumia 800 running Microsoft's Windows Phone 7.5 software, it also presented a range of S40 phones under the new Asha brand.
Some industry experts question Nokia's attachment to S40, but Ms McDowell defends the software.
S40を出し続けることに疑問の指摘もあるが、
"It is a scale business with relatively low research and development cost; so even though the average unit price is low, it's profit is still good," she says.
Biggest loser in South Carolina isn't Santorum. It's evangelical leadership.
大負けしたのは、サントラムではなくて、エブァンジェリカルの指導部だ。
Evangelical leaders endorsed Rick Santorum ahead of the South Carolina primary, but evangelical voters didn't listen – pushing Newt Gingrich to victory instead. This departure marks a dramatic shift in the movement – with far-reaching implications for American politics.
Last week, ahead of the South Carolina primary election, 114 evangelical leaders gathered in Texas to determine which GOP presidential candidate they would collectively endorse. The Christian right vanguards voted 85 to 29 to anoint Rick Santorum. As it turns out, their constituency wasn’t listening.
Two-thirds of voters in the South Carolina primary described themselves as Evangelical or born-again Christians according to exit polls. Yet 44 percent of Evangelicals voted for Newt Gingrich while Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum – the chosen evangelical candidate – nabbed 21 percent each.
During President Bush’s second term, however, the tectonic plates of change began shifting. A new generation of Christians was coming of age that had less tolerance for partisan, polemical, and power-hungry expressions of faith. Influential Christians both young and old signed An Evangelical Manifesto in 2008, which repudiated attempts to politicize the faith. The Christian base in general was expanding, diversifying, and developing independence.
The results so far this primary season – Rick Santorum winning Iowa, Mitt Romney taking New Hampshire, and Newt Gingrich surging to win South Carolina – indicate what could be a wide-open race, at least for the next few contests. It’s the first time in modern GOP primary history that three different candidates won those three states.
Just a few thousand people ― 1 percent of the vote ― went for Herman Cain in Saturday’s primary, despite the comedian’s effort to turn a joke out of Saturday’s primary results by urging fans to vote for the former Godfather’s CEO’s, whose name remained on the ballot.
"Anybody who knows me knows that I have believed in the message of Herman Cain for several days now," the Charleston native told the crowd. "I would want you to vote for Herman Cain because Herman Cain is me."
He was backed by a gospel choir that occasionally chimed in, singing, "Corporations are people," a phrase made famous by Republican front-runner Mitt Romney.
