Germanwatch, a German think tank devoted to the promotion of North-South equity and the preservation of livelihoods. We observe, ana-lyse and interfere. In doing so, we focus on the politics and economics of the North with their worldwide consequences. presented today in Bali (Indonesia) the Climate Change Performance Index 2008, a comparison of the 56 top CO2 emitting nations.

Two concurrent news in the last week are a sad window on Italian society. The first one is the yearly Women to Watch ranking published by the Wall Street Journal, a list of the top 50 women in world politics, economics and culture. Not even an Italian one, despite Italy being one of the G8 nation.

It doesn't sound so strange if you look at the second news, reporting a study realized by the Italian Association of Pediatrics (Sip) interviewing 1.251 children among 12 and 14 years old (the study is dated 2006). When asked what they wanted to be when grown up, young girls had no doubts: their dream is to be a velina (a barely speaking/barely dressed television showgirl). That was the most popular answer, followed by an embarrassing I don't know.

Welcome to Italy

Android, the Android is a software stack for mobile devices that includes an operating system, middleware and key applications, has just released its SDK to public. The Google sponsored open source software for mobiles is running a Android Developer Challenge to promote it around the web. Fact is Italy is out of the games, this is because the heavy, baroque and useless bureaucracy of a Country stuck in middle ages won't allow Google to run the challenge in an acceptable time range.

AESVI, the Italian Association of Video Games Publishers, published its annual report on the state of the national market (find it here, pdf dowload in Italian only).

Italian Video Games Market: General Overview

The Italian Video Games market accounts for 741,908,409 Euros, comprising both Console Hardware and Video Games Software, that is a +2.3% respect to previous year. The above figure could be detailed as following:

• 474,926,533 euros (64%) for video games software (both video games for PC and consoles)
• 266,981,877 (36%) for video games hardware (both home and portable consoles)