AFTER starting with 17 candidates, the Republican field has narrowed to just three real contenders: Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. At first glance, it may seem that all three have a decent shot at the nomination: according toRealClearPolitics, the three are averaging 35.6%, 19.8% and 17.4% in the national polls.
Punters, however, have a rather different view of the horserace. The latest odds on PredictIt show Donald Trump has about an 80% chance of winning the nomination, with Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz trailing behind at 17% and 5%, respectively. (The probabilities don’t quite add up to 100% for technical reasons.) Given his recent string of victories, Mr Trump’s strength is obvious, but why is the market relatively downbeat about Mr Cruz’s prospects? After all, unlike Mr Rubio he has actually won a state.
The main reason...Continue reading
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ACCORDING to an article published in Bloomberg, on February 28th Disney introduced “surge pricing” to its theme parks. Now, when I think of surge pricing, I think of an annoying little screen that appears on my smartphone making sure that I’m happy to pay 6x the normal fare for my cab home. Conditional on having opened the app, my demand for taxis is insensitive enough that I’ll almost always click the ‘Fine - rinse me’ button.
One thing that comforts me as the slow-moving traffic burns a hole in my bank balance: at least the higher fare might have encouraged my fine chauffeur on to the road. Uber, the master of surge pricing (they have been trying to patent it since 2013) claims that is the benefit of surge pricing: it equilibrates supply and demand. A study last year that they published showed that when their surge pricing mechanism broke, waiting times exploded and...Continue reading
Source: Business and finance http://ift.tt/24wYIxG
A DAY after a proposed “cessation of hostilities” came into effect on midnight on the night of February 26th, a relative calm indeed prevailed over most of Syria. On Saturday Aleppo, of late the most ferocious battleground, as the regime and its allies have sought to clear out the rebels, was eerily quiet. A day later the truce is looking more wobbly, amid accusations of violations.
Russia, whose foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, hammered out the deal with John Kerry, the American secretary of state, on February 22nd, grounded its aircraft as agreed on February 27th. Then it resumed air strikes on February 28th. Since the autumn of last year Russia has been bombing Syria, ostensibly to fight terrorists such as Islamic State (IS), but in fact for the most part helping Bashar al-Assad bash the mainstream rebels.
The regime and the main rebel groups, who signed on to the Russian-American deal a few days after the governments agreed to it, admit the fighting has abated but have accused each other of violations. Shelling and mortar fire have been reported around Damascus. The regime is reported to...Continue reading
Source: Middle East and Africa http://ift.tt/1OFCjCB
HILLARY CLINTON’S Southern fire-wall is intact and imposing. That was the meaning of South Carolina’s Democratic primary on February 27th, which, with 90% of the vote counted, the former secretary of state had won by a massive 48-point margin. She beat Bernie Sanders by 74% to 26%. This has given her campaign huge momentum ahead of “Super Tuesday” on March 1st, when a dozen states will hold primaries and caucuses.
Mrs Clinton’s victory was founded on near blanket support from the black voters who constitute over half of South Carolina’s Democratic electorate. She won a staggering 87% of their votes—a bigger share than Barack Obama won in 2008 when campaigning to be America’s first black president. There is a pleasing symmetry to this. A decision by many black South Carolinians to drop Mrs Clinton in favour of Mr Obama in 2008 made a hugely significant contribution to his winning the Democratic nomination. By now proving immune to Mr Sanders’s left-wing blandishments, they appear to have done Mrs Clinton much the same service. She can expect to do similarly well in the several Southern states, including Alabama,...Continue reading
Source: United States http://ift.tt/1QPslX6
WHEN polling stations closed in Ireland at 10pm on February 26th, Fine Gael and Labour, the two parties that make up the governing coalition, were hoping that the pollsters would be wrong. History, in the form of the surprise victory last May of the Conservative party in Britain after five years of austerity, could be repeated in Ireland, they thought.
But those hopes were soon dashed by two exit polls published overnight, suggesting that the government parties have done even worse than expected. Fine Gael was expecting more than 30% of the vote and to emerge the largest party in the Dáil, Ireland's lower chamber of parliament, by a large margin. Although the full result may not be known until Tuesday, initial tallies suggest the party may have received as little as 25% of the vote, with second-placed Fianna Fáil, the populist party that dominated Irish politics before the financial crisis, hot on it heals in terms of seats. And Labour looks as though it will do worse than predicted too. Although Joan Burton, the Labour leader (pictured right) still managed to retain her seat, her party is set to lose the vast majority of...Continue reading
Souce: Europe http://ift.tt/1n5ZGiD