Martin Carel's Profile

And in neighbouring Lebanon, which Syria had long treated as a vassal, the assassination of Rafik Hariri, a popular former prime minister, had triggered massive protests. Many Lebanese blamed Syria for Mr Hariri’s murder. Their spontaneous protests—one of the biggest manifestations of “people’s power” the Arab world had witnessed—came to be known as the “cedar revolution”. Within months (and with the prodding of France and America) the cedar revolution forced Mr Assad to withdraw his army from Lebanon, after a stay of 30 years.

As local newspapers fail, we may learn that their real value was less as a check on politicians than simply as a forum for casual conversation—a place where a town can talk to itself.

The internet is undermining local newspapers much more effectively than it is supporting alternatives.

Twitter is now thought to have around 23m users.

Facebook, one of the biggest networks along with News Corporation’s MySpace, has seen membership leap from 100m in August 2008 to some 250m today.

Firms such as Spotify, founded by Swedish programmers, and we7, based in Britain, stream music on demand to European computers in return for nothing more burdensome than the odd advertisement. Together they have quickly amassed 8m users.

Worldwide sales of music in the form of CDs and DVDs fell by 15% last year, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI).

In a speech in May, President Barack Obama called cyber-security one of America’s “most serious economic and national security challenges.”

The South Korean Defence Security Command reported an average of 95,000 daily attacks.

Yet it is much too early to count Microsoft out. It recently launched Bing, a new search service, which has taken some market share from Google. In October, roughly when Google will make Chrome OS available, Microsoft will release the next iteration of its operating system, Windows 7, a version of which is supposed to run well on netbooks. And the firm is spending billions on a “cloud”, a global network of huge data centres, which will rival Google’s infrastructure and allow Microsoft to offer all kinds of web-based applications.

It plans to do what the now-defunct Netscape attempted when it launched its first browser in the mid-1990s: to make Windows obsolete and turn the browser into the dominant computing platform. Eventually Chrome OS will be used to power full-fledged PCs. All applications written for the software will be web-based and will work with other browsers that are compliant with the latest web standards (even those running on Windows). Chrome OS would also allow users to work offline and synchronise changes later.

a million-odd demonstrators on the streets of Tehran, the like of which has not been seen since the revolution that unseated the shah in 1979

The eagerness of Iran’s rulers for a nuclear capability, which they swear is only for civilian use but which most outsiders reckon would lead inexorably to a bomb, is shared by nearly all Iranians, even those on the streets, as a national birthright in a hostile world.

And it unveiled a new operating system for its phones that, among other things, lets users encrypt data and delete data remotely if a device is lost.

There is outrage that ordinary workers are paying with their jobs even as France has its own fat-cat pay scandals, such as the 180% salary rise, to an annual €1.3m, enjoyed by Jean-François Cirelli, a former government adviser who is now vice-president of GDF-Suez, an energy giant.

Even now, polls show that voters approve of the way Mr Sarkozy defends French interests abroad, though most remain doubtful that he can do much to save jobs at home.