Ïîïóëÿðíûå ñîîáùåíèÿ

суббота

Activists around the world are trumpeting a call to "Dump Russian Vodka" — Stolichnaya, in particular — a protest against the implementation of several anti-gay laws in Russia, the latest in a marked surge in anti-gay sentiment and violence in the country.

But as NPR and other media have reported, the Stoli boycott may be misguided: the vodka that everyone in the world outside Russia drinks isn't made in Russia at all, but in Latvia.

And that got us wondering: What other beloved national products have pulled the old switcheroo and are made somewhere else?

Here are a few we came up with:

As part of our reboot of All Tech Considered, we've been inviting contributors to blog about big-picture questions facing tech and society. One theme we're exploring is the lack of women and people of color in tech — a gap so glaring that ridiculously long lines at tech conferences have inspired photo essays and Twitter feeds.

Enlarge image i

U.S. trade officials have ruled that South Korea's Samsung infringed on patents owned by Apple for specific smartphone features, ratcheting up a tit-for-tat legal battle between the two electronics giants that is matched only by the ferocity of their marketplace competition.

Bloomberg says the patent dispute is over multitouch features and phone jack detection, and that the U.S. International Trade Commission has ordered Samsung to quit importing, selling and distributing devices in the U.S.

However:

"The ruling doesn't make clear how many of Samsung's phones would be affected by the import ban, which is subject to review by the [Obama] administration. Samsung can import all of its phones during that period."

Donald Graham, chairman of The Washington Post Co., is the son and grandson of its leaders for the past 80 years. And along with his niece, publisher Katharine Weymouth, Graham admitted in a video on The Post's website that the family simply didn't have the answers to questions about the paper's future.

"Katharine and I started to look at the numbers [and] realized this year, 2013, would be the seventh straight year of significant declining revenues," Graham explained. "We knew we could keep The Washington Post alive. We knew it could survive. But our aspirations have always been higher [than] that. So we went to see if we could find a buyer."

Or, one might think, a sucker. Jeff Bezos, founder of the online commerce giant Amazon, just paid $250 million for an unprofitable newspaper that looks unlikely to reverse its fortunes anytime soon.

The sale of The Post surprised many media watchers. Given the tough times in the news business, just why would a smart business leader do that?

Enlarge image i

Blog Archive