Over at FT Alphaville, Cardiff Garcia passes along this striking stat from Credit Suisse: Vehicle purchases by consumers alone accounted for 30% of all the GDP growth in the last two quarters. Cars are, ahem, driving the recovery. But will it continue? Auto analysts are expecting another record month of car sales in May: TrueCar.com announced today that it was predicting the highest monthly level of vehicle sales since 2007, up 32 percent since this time last year. Read full article > >

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Auto sales are propping up the U.S. economy

Thousands of racist incidents, ranging from name calling to physical abuse, were recorded in Britain’s schools between 2007 and 2011, the BBC finds.

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Schools saw 87,000 racism cases

THERE MAY BE a positive development in the case of Chen Guangcheng, the Chinese dissident whose daring escape from rural house arrest to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing inspired human-rights supporters the world over — and roiled U.S.-China relations. Read full article > >

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Editorial Board: Much more is at stake in China than Chen Guangcheng’s fate

ATHENS — Homeward bound after the Trojan War, Odysseus of Greek myth had to pick a path through seas harboring a monster with six heads and a whirlpool that digested ships whole. Now, whether modern Greece exits the euro — potentially triggering global economic turmoil in the process — depends on the tough choices of Ivi Moreti and her 11 million countrymen. Read full article > >

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World on their shoulders, Greeks face epic choice

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the New York Times restaurant review. We're honoring the art of criticism in a series on the subject. It took Jay Rayner around 700 words to lay waste to a Russian empire. In a blistering review of famed Moscow restaurateur Arkady Novikov's eponymous London outpost this past February, the Observer critic pronounced the establishment so “astoundingly grim you want to congratulate the kitchen on its incompetence” and compared its cuisine to cheap Chinese food. He was just getting warmed up. “And so my advice to you. Don't go to Novikov. Keep not going. Keep not going a lot,” Rayner wrote. “In a city with a talent for opening hateful and tasteless restaurants, Novikov marks a special new low. That's its real achievement.” Harsh words, but for a professional restaurant critic, this was par for the course. As with any creative medium, the culinary arts are subjected to critical judgments. With the good, comes the bad. Or in the case of Novikov, the “very, very bad.” While some readers might think restaurant critics write with sharp knives, a poison-dipped pen and a particular appetite for disdain, those in the field argue otherwise. Their mandate is to be objective, to give an honest appraisal of the restaurant to their readers. “You still have a basic job to do; you’ve got to get it right, and that’s what people expect,” says Rayner, whose eBook “My Dining Hell: Twenty Ways To Have a Lousy Night Out” will be released on June 1. And part of getting it right means occasionally dropping, what the restaurant industry calls, the “goose egg” – a zero-star review that in essence says, “Take your hard-earned money elsewhere.” “With the negative reviews, I once said they were like chest infections and car crashes – they were things that happened to me, not things I went out looking for,” says Rayner. Hanna Raskin, the restaurant critic for Seattle Weekly , also agrees critics do not go to a restaurant because they know it’s going to be abysmal. “Not only is the writing not fun, but the research isn’t fun either. We’re the ones that have to eat that bad food again and again and again.” But before pen is put to paper, critics must get to the marrow of the matter and decide if the lousy restaurant is even worth a review. With a new hot spot opening nearly every week in major metropolitan areas, it’d be an unfeasible – and stomach-straining – task to conquer them all. “I’ll review it if it’s a restaurant that people are serious about because of a prominent location or well-known chef or local restaurateur behind it. Basically, if it’s something that my readers really want to know about,” says John Kessler, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's dining critic . Raskin and Rayner also cite the prominence of the chef, location and media campaign. If the venue in question is a little mom and pop place, it’s simply not reasonable. “The times when I haven’t written about a restaurant at all is when I realize the restaurant is not one that deserves the attention of a national newspaper,” says Rayner. To put it in stateside perspective, he compares it to reviewing a dreadful restaurant in Boise, Idaho. If no one is planning to go or already going there, the review won’t be entertaining – or more importantly, serviceable to the reader. A large part of that entertainment value is drawn from how the reviewer crafts the language of “the slam.” That means letting people know how things taste and how much things cost; a full sense of the harrowing experience often with a side of relatively good-natured snark. “We don’t want to sound like the disgruntled Yelper,” says Kessler, who maintains he’s always a half a grade nicer in print than if he were talking to a friend. “You don’t want to sound offended or bent out of shape if the restaurant is bad. You want to be a nice person about it but you also want to go to town.” Raskin also says that, in her negative reviews, the reader should infer “that it was probably even worse.” Rayner, however, serves it in the raw: what he says in the review is what he thought. “The ability of people in the restaurant business to screw things up and find unique ways to screw things up never ceases to amaze me,” he says, adding he’s in the business of selling newspapers, not restaurants. Kessler admires this cultural candor. “The English people are great because they take such glee in their snarky locution. Americans will never do that. We just can’t. It’s not in our culture to be poetic a**holes.” But, U.K. critics aren’t the only one finding glee in negativity – the audience relishes it as well. Raskin says she actually gets more positive comments from readers when she prints negative reviews. “Almost every time I wrote something negative, I get the feedback, ‘I’m so glad you’re telling it like it is. I’m so glad you said that.’ And nobody ever says that when I write a good review,” she said. To this point, Rayner cites a Leo Tolstoy quote: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” What makes that particular restaurant bad also makes it unique – and uniqueness makes a much more compelling story. There's also a touch of schadenfreude, or pleasure derived from others' misfortunes. “You start your Sunday morning reading a terrible review of somebody’s restaurant and as long as you’re not the chef’s mother, you’re probably going to feel slightly better for the rest of the day,” says Rayner, who at one point spoke with a clinical psychologist about readers’ penchant for social comparing. “I often say that my column is read for vicarious pleasure or brackish displeasure,” he adds. Yet, for every disparaging word written and read, these critics realize the pen is mightier than the fork. In 2003, master French chef Bernard Loiseau took his own life following a bad review of his restaurant, the Cote d'Or, by GaultMillau and reports that he would lose his third Michelin star – the highest rating a restaurant can attain by the Michelin Guide . While Loiseau already suffered from depression, some felt the reviews may have been his breaking point. In 2007, after former New York Times critic Frank Bruni awarded zero stars to restaurateur Jeffrey Chodorow’s Kobe Club, Chodorow fired back. He ran a full-page ad in the Times attacking Bruni’s assessment , citing the review as a personal attack and questioning Bruni’s qualifications to be in the critic’s post. When Raskin was the food critic for the Dallas Observer, she said she received death threats. And Rayner has been invited outside for a go. “I think most critics realize it’s not just the chef or the owner you’re addressing here, but the careers of the cooks in the kitchen, the dishwashers and the servers all ultimately depend on what you say,” said Raskin. “We take this responsibility very seriously.” As journalists, they know how it feels to be subject to an outsider's opinion. “To be a writer is an act of great arrogance – to think that anybody would give a damn about what you have to say. You, therefore, have to take what anybody wants to say about you – and it’s not fun,” says Rayner. Ultimately, critics are paid for how they write, not how they eat – and for restaurants on the receiving end, that’s the bitter truth. Take Our Poll Do you have a favorite “bad” review? We'd love if you'd share it in the comments below. Previously – For restaurant reviewers, are health risks at critical mass? and Everyone's a critic, some just call it their day job

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Written in the stars: the art of the bad review

In 1994, Republicans had the “ Contract With America .” In 2006, Democrats touted their “ Six for ’06 ” plan. And in 2010, the GOP unveiled a “ Pledge to America .” The last three times control of the House has changed hands, the winning party has run on some form of public, cohesive agenda that could be embraced by incumbents and challengers alike. But as House Democrats mount an uphill climb to recapture the chamber this November, it’s not clear whether they plan to follow that model. Read full article > >

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House Democrats have a goal for 2012 elections, but do they need an agenda?

More than 230,000 jobless Americans will lose their unemployment insurance by this weekend as reductions in the federal program that provides extended benefits to the long-term unemployed take broader effect. Read full article > >

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Extended jobless benefits cut in eight states

A s more sordid details emerge in the trial of former U.S. senator John Edwards (D), one question lingers: Why on earth did this man, who had so much going for him, risk everything — including a shot at the presidency of the United States — to have an affair with a woman best described as unpredictable? It’s hard not to wonder, as details are being recounted in a North Carolina courtroom of the frantic efforts to stash Edwards’s pregnant mistress from his dying wife (and the rest of the world) and how Edwards hit up a 101-year-old heiress for more money even as he was being investigated for campaign finance violations (for which he is now on trial). Read full article > >

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John Edwards and Harry Thomas Jr.: They didn’t think anyone would notice?

Jamaica’s main political parties are examining a claim that a fraudster donated millions of dollars to their coffers in 2007.

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Jamaica parties to probe funding

South Africa must investigate Zimbabwean officials over allegations they tortured opposition figures in 2007, a Pretoria high court rules.

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SA ruling over Zimbabwe torture

Forged by a 2007 merger, Dewey & LeBoeuf set its sights on quickly becoming a global powerhouse in corporate law. Now, the company finds itself on the brink of collapse amid a partner exodus and too much debt.

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DealBook: Once an Ambitious Law Firm, Reduced to Grim Dispatches

Bryce Harper and his preternatural ability, his magnetism anywhere on a baseball diamond, will spread murmurs and chills throughout Nationals Park for years to come. The first time came Tuesday night. Even if the Washington Nationals and their dismal offense are blown out, even if he goes hitless and strikes out in his first at-bat, even if the place is half-full, Harper will still find a moment to amaze. Read full article > >

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Nationals vs. Diamondbacks: Bryce Harper makes home debut, but Nats’ offense remains lifeless in fifth straight loss

KABUL — President Obama made an unannounced visit to Afghanistan on Tuesday, landing on the one-year anniversary of the attack that killed Osama bin Laden and during a pivotal moment in U.S-Afghan relations, as the two countries look to define their military and economic ties beyond 2014. Read full article > >

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Obama makes surprise visit to Afghanistan

In the year since the world watched Kate Middleton glide into Westminster Abbey and emerge Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, the wife of Britain’s future king has wowed Hollywood , been named to best-dressed lists and charmed the recession-weary by sharing outfits with her mother . She divides her time between a cottage in windswept Wales, where the Royal Navy has stationed Prince William, and Kensington Palace, where an apartment is being renovated to their specifications. She smiles, rarely speaks and looks princess-perfect in a hat. Read full article > >

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Kate Middleton, the commoner who saved the queen

Over the last month there have been stories about brutal attacks on whites by blacks in anger over or retaliation for what happened to Trayvon Martin. “Now, that’s justice for Trayvon” was reportedly heard in one incident. “This is for Trayvon” was the remark in another. And in yet another beating, a suspect told police that he beat a white teen in anger over the Trayvon Martin case. This is madness. Read full article > >

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Jonathan Capehart: Ugly attacks in the name of Trayvon Martin