Welcome to the audio edition of The Economist, the authoritative weekly newspaper covering world politics, business, finance, science and technology. The audio edition contains word-for-word recordings of almost all articles published in the The Economist read by professional newsreaders and actors.

Each audio edition is available for Download

on the same day of publication (every Friday), and contains separate files of each article allowing you to easily browse through each edition. The audio edition is presented in the same order as the printed edition so you can simply scroll through to your favourite section or find articles you may have seen and want to listen to later.

Download

ed audio files are in zipped MP3 format and will need to be extracted using WinZip before you can listen to them. Once Download

ed, you can listen from your computer or upload into a portable audio device.

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WELL, happy new year! This blog began in September and promised to run through the turn of the year. So, now that 2009 has arrived it’s time to sign off. This will be our last post. You can of course continue to follow and comment on developments in 2009 elsewhere on www.economist.com.