This year's Bastiat Prize is now closed for entries. Thank you very much to all those who entered. The standard of entries has been exceptionally high and we look forward to releasing a shortlist of potential winners in mid-September.

Frederic Bastiat is 209 years young today.

June 30 2010 is also the final day for entries to the ninth annual Bastiat Prize for Journalism, which has prizes for both bloggers and print journalists: online entry form and full details are here.

Bastiat was masterful at exposing the absurd reasoning behind protectionist policies. His classics include A Negative Railroad and the Candlemakers' Petition- a satirical appeal to block out the sun to “save the candlemakers” in France.

Bastiat’s work is as relevant today as it was two centuries ago and those who carry on his legacy deserve recognition. How else, but with the clarity of humour, could we decipher the logic behind the EU taxing our shoes in order to “save our shoemakers” and the US unfairly subsidising agriculture abroad to compensate for unfairly subsidising its own farmers at home?

To celebrate his birthday, the Foundation for Economic Education has also published a free download of The Law on Facebook. 

Speaking at a DfID's event Bob Geldof said:

"Poverty can only be eliminated through trade and investment. And it is trade and investment that will support the dynamism and enterprise of people in sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia and give them the jobs, dignity and opportunity that they deserve."

Beijing’s thirst for top-down infrastructure projects is hampering access to water for China’s poorest people. The latest proposed scheme, the “South-to-North Water Diversion Project”, attempts to solve the deep inequality in access to water across the northern (where water is more scarce) and southern (where water is more prevalent) regions. However, despite great expense, this project is as likely to fail as the previous expensive and misguided scheme- the Three Gorges Dam. IPN’s Caroline Boin and Nathaniel Clark discuss the implications of this latest "Super-Project" and offer a viable alternative to this most pressing of problems in today’s Korea Times.

We are amongst the first to laud Paul Kagame’s economic reforms that have propelled Rwanda’s Doing Business rankings straight to the top of the “best reformers” list.  Slashing the cost of registering new businesses and removing other bureaucratic and administrative barriers to raising capital, making investments and trading domestically and internationally are the reforms other African governments must emulate if they are to escape the poverty and aid trap. 

Yet these business-friendly reforms have come at a steep price for political freedom and civil liberties in Rwanda.  Kagame looks certain to win yet another seven-year term in August and there is every indication that he is becoming more authoritarian by the day, using state powers to make life a living hell for political opposition and trampling over the freedom of speech that forms the backbone of civil and open society.  News of the assassination of Jean Leonard Rugambage, Editor of a Rwandan newspaper that was critical of Kagame before authorities mysteriously forced it to shut its operations, does little to suppress many fears that Rwanda is spiralling towards a political dictatorship.