SEVEN DAYS

A glance at the week that was...

A glance at the week that was ...

New era begins

You may not have noticed it, but there’s a new US president. Barack Obama was inaugurated on Tuesday in front of an estimated two million people in Washington and many, many more on television screens across the globe.

After the reading of the oath of office was fluffed, he was sworn in again afterwards, getting the words in the right order. He and his wife Michelle then visited several balls, where Obama had to do his best not to tread on his wife’s toes in front of the world’s press. The next day, he ordered that Guantanamo Bay be closed. The next four years will be interesting.

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Pre-teen promo

If you’re 10 years old, this sounds like the ideal job: hundreds of thousands of British children are being paid to test food and toys and then promote them to their classmates. Kids as young as five, often with the blessing of their schools, are paid as much as £4,000 (€4,250) a year to do market research on behalf of companies including Mattel (who make Barbie dolls, right) and Coca-Cola. The figures come from a new book, Consumer Kids, which criticises the practice. “This is insidious and downright creepy,” said the UK government’s “consumer tsar”.

The numbers

2Number of Green Party councillors who resigned this week, claiming unhappiness at the party's role in Government

43The percentage rise in complaints to the Pensions Ombudsman

7Number of Golden Raspberry nominations (for worst movie) earned by Mike Myers's The Love Guru

We now know

Only Austrian teenagersdrink more alcohol than Irish ones, according to a survey

Unemploymentin Ireland is now more than 300,000

The taste for frogs' legsin Europe and Asia may lead to the amphibians' extinction, claim Australian researchers