World Faces New Wave of Currency Wars

An American bill imposing punitive tarifs on countries that undervalue their currencies is set to unleash a new trade war between the US and China. But in fact the whole global currency system is in a state of jeopardy. As confidence in the dollar drops, private investors are putting their faith in gold. By SPIEGEL Staff.

via www.spiegel.de

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State of the Internet in Europe

Above go on the the charts, here are some observations about the Internet in Europe:
  • There are 475 million Internet users in Europe (worldwide total is 1.97 billion).
  • Europe has 24.2% of the world’s Internet users.
  • Europe as a whole has almost twice as many Internet users as the United States.
  • The country with the most Internet users in Europe is Germany, with 65 million.
  • The country with the fewest number of Internet users in Europe is the Vatican City State, with a whopping 93 Internet users (and a total population of 829).
  • Ten European countries have more than 10 million Internet users.
  • The average Internet penetration across Europe is 58.4%.
  • The country with the highest Internet penetration in Europe is Iceland, with 97.6%, followed by Norway (94.8%), and Sweden (92.5%). Those are the only three European countries with more than 90% Internet penetration. (For comparison, the United States has an Internet penetration of 77.3%.)
By Internet penetration, we mean the share of the population with Internet access.

via royal.pingdom.com

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Connecting European Capitals by Train

via flickr.com

Diagram shows the routes by train from London to capitals of Europe. This infographic inspired by the classic Tube map.

The colours of the different lines are largely fanciful, with some faint logic: The red Imperial line connects some of the notable colonial capitals - London, Paris, Rome and Berlin; the light blue line connects Balkan capitals; the dark blue connects the Scandanavian capitals.