Let's Get 7 in IELTS

Analysis has a long and, some might say, rather worthy history as a thoughtful documentary strand on Radio 4. So it was pretty surprising that the programme this week found itself at the centre of suggestions that it had been used by a Whitehall counter-terrorism unit as part of a "global propaganda push" against al-Qaeda.

The story on the front page of Tuesday's Guardian didn't actually name Analysis. The paper's home affairs editor Alan Travis reported that, according to a secret Home Office paper, the BBC was being targeted by the Research, Information and Communication Unit (RICU), which aims to counter al-Qaeda propaganda in Britain and overseas.

It was quoted by the Guardian as saying: "We are pushing this material to UK media channels, eg a BBC radio programme exposing tensions between AQ leadership and supporters." It was quickly apparent to us that the programme in question must be the 7 August edition of Analysis, presented by the BBC's Security Correspondent Frank Gardner, and broadcast in a slightly different form on the World Service this week.

Henry Ford certainly is a great guy. He introduced mass-production, putting the whole world on the wheels. But his contribution to the world is not just his Model T, which, like the old Singer sewing machine, was built all but for eternity. Both machines were, of course, almost fool-proof easy to handle, and best of all, capitalists could increase the wages of workers and cut the prices of their products at the same time, thanks to mass-production and its resultant global popularization.

Things began to change after the economic globalization, whose inception historians would date back to the end of the Second World War. The United States won the war, and women's obsession with nylon stockings surged across the world where GIs spread the gospel of semi-transparent sexy hose. Incidentally, GI, which stands for "government issue," means the American soldier, who was ubiquitous the world over in the latter half of the 1940s. The best present a German or Italian or Japanese girl could have from her GI friend was the nylon stockings.

Well, they lasted almost forever. That made American hose-makers worry about their business prospective. The good lasting nylon stockings would saturate the market sooner than later. So they had to turn out flimsier stockings to keep their market wide open. Pantyhose now available doesn't last long. Other manufacturers followed suit, producing increasingly costly wares that have a much shorter lifespan.

As U.S. President George W. Bush prepares to leave the White House after eight years in office, he has once again revisited the sensitive issue of Washington's relationship with Taiwan.

During a meeting at the White House with Asian media reporters held on the eve of his last official trip to Asia, President Bush brought up the issue of Taiwan and his views about the current state of cross-strait relations.

Addressing what he termed the "Taiwan-Chinese relationship," President Bush said that following recent developments, "people who study this very closely will see that the issue is in a better place."

Russia and Georgia have signed a cease-fire accord over the weekend, ending a nine-day conflict. But Russian troops won't leave Georgia easily.

Fighting in Georgia (pop. 4.5 million), one of 12 states in the Caucasus, began last Friday when Tbilisi launched a military incursion into South Ossetia (pop. 70,000) to rout separatist rebels.

Russia, which supports the separatists as many of them carry Russian passports, responded swiftly, sending tanks across the border into S. Ossetia. Fighting quickly spread to Abkhazia (pop. 100,000), another breakaway region.

After all the shock associated with climate change are we beginning to experience the bore factor? Are the warnings becoming so frequent, and so very apocalyptic, that they have lost the capacity to arrest the public conscience? 

Are we suffering already from "green fatigue", whereby we start treating interim, draft and final reports like white noise: something which is disturbing, even painful, but which we try to block out? Or are the warnings exaggerated?

Here in Australia the question is particularly pertinent, since the economist Ross Garnaut has just delivered his long-awaited draft report on how climate change could affect the Australian economy and outlined the case for a carbon emissions trading scheme by 2010.