In the Big Apple, however, Cintron ended up finding a "mother lode" of pay phones, 15 of them on a seven-block walk up Broadway on New York's Upper West Side.

CNN: Pay phones: The search for an endangered species

Having been savaged by an outraged electorate over the liquidation of seven jusen, or mortgage companies, last year, and with a crucial upper-house election due next summer, Japanese politicians have been understandably nervous about even hinting that public money is needed to sort out Japan's banking mess.

ECONOMIST: Japanese banks: And then there were 19 | The

Since independence in 1976, per capita output in this Indian Ocean archipelago has expanded to roughly seven times the pre-independence, near-subsistence level, moving the island into the upper-middle income group of countries.

FORBES: Seychelles

But he cut his political teeth in the PRI, which he left reluctantly in 1988 when free-market technocrats gained the upper hand in the party which ruled Mexico for seven decades until Vicente Fox's election victory of 2000.

ECONOMIST: A restoration of the old order in Mexico?

One came from the would-be National Unity and Social Justice Party, which has spent seven years awaiting approval for a platform aimed at strengthening relations between Muslims and Christians in strife-torn Upper Egypt.

ECONOMIST: Democracy can sometimes be too tame