ClearTips: Powerful paragraphs

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Platinum may be more expensive, troy ounce for troy ounce, but gold remains the noblest metal in the eyes of chemists. Other so-called noble metals react fairly easily with their environment—a copper roof turns green and silver tarnishes—but gold's ability to resist all but the strongest acids is part of the reason it has fascinated kings and commoners for centuries. Even platinum helps other chemicals to react, which is why it is used as a catalyst for car exhausts. Gold, however, remains haughtily above such common tasks, refusing to react with the molecular masses.
     But why? It is not as though gold were chemically inert. After all, anything less than 24-carat gold is an example of gold's ability to bond strongly with other noble metals. The unresolved puzzle has been why oxygen, hydrogen, and other reactive constituents of the atmosphere—and the constituents of many acids—are hard put to bond with gold. Theorists in Denmark now believe that they have the answer. And their calculations do not only provide an explanation for gold's unique pedigree. They also point the way to designing better catalysts.

In other cases, families can afford to send their children to school only if they also work at the same time. It is this family dilemma that makes laws against child labor so difficult to enforce. Thus in Mexico children obtain forged birth certificates in order to secure jobs in the maquiladora factories operated by U.S. firms along the northern border. And it is this that makes worthy corporate codes of conduct liable to backfire: the danger is that, far from contributing to the end of child labor, they merely shift it to shadier areas of the economy that are far harder to police.
     So what should companies do? Some initiatives appear more promising than others. One such is the effort that Levi Strauss, a maker of jeans, has made to provide schooling for child workers in its suppliers' plants in Bangladesh. The provision of other benefits, such as medical care and meals, may also be appropriate.

The Börsen-Zeitung is among the most expensive daily papers in the world. For the hefty DM 7.20 ($3.80) cover price, readers get the best and most detailed reporting of German companies. The editor, Hans Konradin Herdt, has the sharpest pen of any financial journalist in the country: bound copies of his leading articles are sent to all subscribers as a Christmas present. His satirical talents reduce sober-sided German financiers to stitches. "A silver bullet into the boardroom," is one advertiser's assessment of the paper's reach.
     Just who reads it? That, it turns out, is a closely guarded secret. Usually for a newspaper supported by advertising, the Börsen-Zeitung refuses to disclose figures, lest they be "misunderstood," Mr. Herdt says. It also declines to commission standard research about its jobs and spending power. Insiders suspect that circulation is small, between 6,000 and 10,000. Simon McPhillips of DMB&B, an advertising agency, says the "ludicrous" lack of information certainly deters advertisers, especially foreign ones.

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