99 years old and STILL planning ahead...

99 years old and STILL planning ahead...
ANOTHER year, another official birthday. As you will see, my age has just gone up from 98 to 99 and the world is beginning to worry about the potentially devastating effects of the so-called Centennial Bug, when it hits...

City news: FTSE, Sports Direct and CBI

City news: FTSE, Sports Direct and CBI
BROKERS expect the FTSE100 to be weighed down by low commodity prices this year, as well as slowing growth in emerging markets. Source: Daily Express :: Finance Feed http://ift.tt/1R11Z...

Osborne ‘behind axed bank culture review’

Osborne ‘behind axed bank culture review’
GEORGE Osborne has been accused of forcing regulators to ditch a review into Britain’s banking culture under pressure from the industry’s biggest names. Source: Daily Express :: Finance Feed http://ift.tt/1msE7...

Bailing on the constitution

Bailing on the constitution
AMERICA incarcerates people awaiting trial at triple the world average. Every day, roughly 500,000 people who have been convicted of no crime sit in county jails. Some are there because a judge determined they were too...

The WORST plane food of 2015

The WORST plane food of 2015
Plane food isn't exactly renowned for its great taste and impressive apperance but these meals are a step too far Source: Daily Express :: Travel Feed http://ift.tt/1P1VF...

Patrick Buchanan on hard-right populism

Patrick Buchanan on hard-right populism
A generation ago Patrick Buchanan ran for president with the same ideas Donald Trump uses today. Now he offers his view on whether hard-right populism can win in 2016 Continue reading Source: United States...

Courting disaster

Courting disaster
Communists, communists everywhere WHEN the far-right Law and Justice (PiS) party won Poland’s parliamentary elections on October 25th, it was clear that the country was headed for change. But few expected anything like what...

Learning the hard way

Learning the hard way
That’s an ä not an å AFTER Aida Hadzialic’s parents fled war-torn Bosnia for Sweden in the early 1990s, they put their five-year-old daughter in a school full of native Swedes and made sure she studied hard to get ahead....

Snow job

Snow job
DOWN a bumpy two-lane road through the hills north-west of Vladivostok, the Pogranichny border crossing is where Russia meets China. Bilateral relations are blossoming, and trade should be booming. Yet lorries loaded with...

Russian roulette

Russian roulette
A billion on Siberia, please THE shiny new Tigre de Cristal casino looks like a black glass and steel spacecraft that has landed in the Siberian forest. A neon sign advertises “Seafood delicacies from the Sea of Japan”....

Reagan’s Chinese echo

Reagan’s Chinese echo
RONALD REAGAN, a sworn enemy of communism, and Xi Jinping, a doughty defender of Communist rule in China, ought to have little in common. Lately, though, Mr Xi has seemed to channel the late American president. He has been...

Weibo warriors

Weibo warriors
ON DECEMBER 25th, some three years after taking over as China’s leader, Xi Jinping posted his first tweet. For a man clearly rattled by the rapid spread of social media, and grimly determined to tame them, the venue was...

Of slavery and swastikas

Of slavery and swastikas
Where intersextionality meets microaggressive adultism WISHING for his death “in a fiery car accident” was only one of many messages directed at Chuck Henson when he became the University of Missouri’s new interim vice-chancellor...

Revenge of the nerds

Revenge of the nerds
Steve McGarrett, awaiting feedback THE Christian siblings were doing their homework when the police arrived. Two officers entered the house, guns drawn, pursuing what was evidently a prank tip-off about a captive being held...

Indecent disclosure

Indecent disclosure
ASK Republicans how best to reform taxes, and they will inevitably mention Ronald Reagan. In 1986 the Gipper slashed levies on earnings; the highest income-tax rate tumbled from 50% to 28%. At the same time, Reagan simplified...

Pitchfork politics

Pitchfork politics
BEFORE Donald Trump, there was Patrick Buchanan. More than two decades before Mr Trump kicked over the Republican tea table, Mr Buchanan, a former speechwriter and White House aide to Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald...

Prediction 2016

Prediction 2016
IF YOU believed the pollsters, America’s 2012 presidential election looked like a nail-biter. Most national surveys had Mitt Romney and Barack Obama tied; Gallup, the country’s oldest scientific polling outfit, had the...

Barmy weather

Barmy weather
THE year 2015 was probably the hottest since meteorological records began. It certainly ended with a flourish. On North America’s east coast, dreams of a white Christmas were banished by springlike temperatures. In New...

Flying’s new gear

Flying’s new gear
EVERYONE remembers the Wright brothers, who made the first powered, heavier-than-air flights by human beings on a beach in North Carolina in 1903. Few, by contrast, remember Charlie Taylor, a mechanic at the brothers’ bicycle...

No end in sight

No end in sight
He’s backed by a fat budget SITTING on the floor with neighbours, Sakariya uses a mobile phone to flick through photos of his son. In one, Kholid stands dressed in his school uniform. In another he sits hunched over his...

Reagan’s Chinese echo

Reagan’s Chinese echo
RONALD REAGAN, a sworn enemy of communism, and Xi Jinping, a doughty defender of Communist rule in China, ought to have little in common. Lately, though, Mr Xi has seemed to channel the late American president. He has been...

One country, but no single market

One country, but no single market
NARENDRA MODI likes to make a splash abroad. On December 25th he turned up in Pakistan, the first visit by an Indian prime minister in more than a decade, for an impromptu summit with his counterpart, Nawaz Sharif. At home,...