EnlargeJune 2008 | illustration by Paul Sahre

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sunday, june 1
Tote
China bans plastic bags

The Chinese use more than 1 trillion plastic bags a year -- 20% of the global total -- many of which end up choking sewers or decorating the countryside. To combat plastic pollution, the government is banning shops from giving free plastic bags, and barring factories from making ultrathin ones. But China isn't going from red to green just for Mother Earth. Production of plastic packaging devours 37 million barrels of oil a year. Cutting that figure would help the planet as well as China's balance sheet. -- Theunis Bates

sunday, june 1
Integrate
World Newspaper Congress
Göteborg, Sweden

How can newspapers boost both print and digital advertising? How can they monetize their Web sites? Are search engines friends or foes? The 1,500 media reps attending the four-day World Newspaper Congress will reckon with such tough questions, gathering in the homeland of the world's oldest continuously published paper, Post- och Inrikes Tidningar (Post & Domestic News-paper) -- which went online-only in 2007, after 362 years in print. As Tim Bowdler, CEO of Britain's Johnston Press and a congress headliner, says, "The opportunities lie in the very threats that confront us." -- Clay Dillow

tuesday, june 3
Worry
OECD Forum 2008
Paris

If you're looking for comic relief from the world's woes, you might want to skip the annual forum of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The OECD -- a think tank funded by the world's 30 richest countries -- will entertain 1,000-plus business and political leaders with doomy-gloomy discussions on the faltering economy and market turmoil. Expect humor-free speeches from WTO honcho Pascal Lamy and European Central Bank boss Jean-Claude Trichet. -- TB

tuesday, june 3
Read
Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior
By Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman

Why would a game-show audience intentionally mislead a contestant? And why shouldn't you pay your friend for a favor? Sway has the answers. In this engaging journey through the workings -- and failings -- of the mind, the Brafman brothers use captivating characters, from a violin virtuoso to a Florida football coach, to explain the forces that derail rational thinking and suggest how to avoid being swayed. Their stories of senselessness -- including one about a Harvard business student who paid $204 for a $20 bill -- are as fascinating as the lessons we learn from them. -- Bianca Bosker

tuesday, june 3
Read More
Why the Dalai Lama Matters
By Robert Thurman

The eve of the 19th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests brings this timely and passionate essay from Robert Thurman, a Columbia professor, former Tibetan Buddhist monk, and father of the famous Uma. He makes the business case for developing a semiautonomous Tibet as not only an exclusive, Bhutan-like tourist destination and eco-preserve but also a Switzerland of Asia. He envisions it as a global finance center, with its own privacy laws, that would help free the flow of foreign investment on the continent. However utopian, Thurman is compelling on the point that a radical about-face on human rights is a prerequisite for China to grow into its role as a 21st-century superpower -- a point that has been made in the Olympics-related protests. "Tibet's problem is China's problem and Asia's problem," he writes, "and therefore our global, individual problem -- yours and mine." -- Anya Kamenetz