"I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything..." (Richard Feynman)
China bashing has become a fashion. Especially with western media. ( Luckily not with European business. Big business (i.e. Volkswagen) is investing heavily in the PRC).
A recent example is from the Corriere della Sera, which reported about the terrible treatment of women in China. A woman, who brought pictures, which showed how she was beaten by her husband, could not get immediate divorce, what a terrible country!
The German Parliament yesterday has decided a law about the "living will", "testamento biologico" in Italian. An "advanced directive" (living will) is now completely binding for doctor, hospitals and relatives. Background in German at.https://www.berlinonline.de/berliner-zeitung/politik/130415/index.php.
Hey, Economics Geniuses! What Happened? - BusinessWeek The business week articles treats how the world economists failed to predict the finance crisis of the last year. One of the reader commented: " so what? economics is not science, but philosophy and you cannot get any relevant guidance out of that". This is widespread opinion, linguistically well expressed in English, where "science" is only applied for physics, chemistry, biology and the likes, whereas all the other stuff is labeled as "humanities".
The Berlusconi government has launched an assault against fundamental rights of individual freedom. They are going to decide a law in the senate and then in the "camera dei deputati" with the working title "testo unificato sul testamento biologico". A "testamento biologico" is a last will, anyone can write down defining what he or she wants in case of incidents or terminal illness when not beeing more able to decide.