Economist, Jan 25, 2014

choi

(1) Road Safety |  Reinventing the Wheel. Roads bring growth to poor countries--and death. Making them safer need not cost much.
(The vast majority of victims [in road crashes] dies in poor and middle-income countries--1.2m in 2011, compared with 99,000 in rich ones. For every 100,000 cars in the3 rich world, fewer than 15 people die each year. In Ethiopea the figure is 250 times higher. * * * Inthe rich world, road deaths and growth went hand-in-hand for decades: the first death-by-car was in 1896 and the peak came in the 1970s. However, since then, restraints on drivers and investment in safety have slashed road deaths in the rich world by more than half. New York’s roads are now at the safest since record began in 1910. Sweden is still some way from its stated goal of ending road deaths altogether, but in 2013 just one Swedish child under seven died in a crash”)
countries

My comment:
(i) There is no need to read the text.
(ii) There is a bar chart in this article that provides a snapshot of two years.

“Global deaths
By selected cause, m[illions]
………………………………………………………………..2000……….2011
Road (poor and middle-income countries)......~0.85…….~1.2
Tuberculosis………………………………………………~1.35…….~1
Malaria………………………………………………………~0.75……~0,6
Road (rich countries)....................................~0.15……~0.1

choi

(2) Lionsgate | Fighting the System. Hollywood has a new star studio with a different approach to the film business.
www.economist.com/news/business/ ... m-business-fighting

Quote:

“WHEN some of Hollywood’s biggest studios were pitched a film based on a book series in which young people fight to the death at the behest of a totalitarian government, they passed on it. Bad call. Lionsgate, a fast-growing independent studio, grabbed it, and five years later ‘The Hunger Games’ is one of the most successful film franchises in cinema history.

“Other than the surviving six ‘majors,’ all dating from the age of Gloria Swanson and Rudy Valentino, the young challenger, founded only 17 years ago[1997] in [Vancouver,] Canada, is the only studio [as opposed to ‘majors’] to have grossed more than $1 billion in a year, as it did in 2012 and 2013.

“Lionsgate has risen by melding risk aversion with serious ambition.

“Unlike the old Hollywood majors, it has no studio backlot: its offices are in a dull office block in Santa Monica.

“Lionsgate is lean, with only 550 or so employees compared with around 10,000 at Warner Bros. That means quicker decisions, and less chance that good ideas get stuck in ‘development hell.’”

“The majors are nowadays all part of large conglomerates, but Lionsgate has no sugar-daddy to run to if it hits hard times. However, its independence has also freed it to pursue opportunities others might neglect.

My comment:
(a) There is no need to read the rest.
(b) Its official website states, "Lionsgate’s corporate headquarters are located at [street address] Santa Monica, California 90404[.] Lionsgate is domiciled in Canada."
(c) Mostly spelled “backlot” (without a space), “back lot” is defined:

back lot (n; Americanism; First Known Use 1795–1805):
"Movies  an outdoor area, usually adjoining a studio, used for the shooting of exterior scenes"
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc 2013.
dictionary.reference.com/browse/back+lot

I select this one, because it is the only one that provides etymology--though not helpful.