The World Is Still Round

To finish up catching up on the week's news, Politic Blunder will do one better and look at people predicting the future. It is a tradition at The Economist  to print an issue at the end of the year with lots of well-informed predictions about the coming year. This £5.50 issue is worth a place in your toilet, as it has a lot of useful and nifty financial information and some interesting articles written by world leaders, CEOs, and Third World presidents.

The real reason to get it, though, is the predictive articles themselves. Some snippets from The Economist's perfected the art of self-evident prophecy:

-In Iraq: 'Arguments over the pace of American withdrawal will persist'

-In Australia: 'The world's second-dryest continent is running out of water'

-In Africa: 'A better future for sub-Saharan Africa depends on better policies'

-In the USA: 'Obama will have to learn how to say no'

In 2009, women across the world will have to learn to say no to me, but will be inexplicably unable to.