In April 2000, the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) listed shares in a newly created subsidiary, PetroChina, on the New York Stock Exchange. This initial public offering (IPO) became a landmark event -- not because it effected the quasi-privatisation of one of China's most important state-owned companies, or because it was one of the largest offerings of shares in a Chinese company on a US stock market -- but because it precipitated a chain of events that could radically effect the disclosure of non-financial information by companies listed in the US.

Media executives and TV addicts alike have been celebrating the advent of interactive television, like TiVo and Microsoft's UltimateTV. But the technology has the potential of turning into a public-relations nightmare. In March, the Denver-based Privacy Foundation reported that TiVo, a popular set-top box that can digitally record up to 30 hours of programming, sends nightly activity reports back to corporate headquarters.

Urban uplift has gone through many phases in the last few decades -- from the militant community empowerment experiments of the 1960s, to the large-scale government housing projects of the 1970s, to the new public-private partnerships of the 1980s and 1990s. The latest enthusiasm is "technological empowerment" -- symbolized nowhere more clearly than Edgewood Terrace in Northeast Washington, D.C., which has achieved that peculiar status of the famous left-behind community.

The unraveling of Macedonia is a humanitarian crisis with great strategic and historical significance. What happens in the squalid, grimy streets of Macedonian villages now directly affects the future expansion of NATO that President Bush has spoken so eloquently about.