We know where that came from
MOST of the world’s supply of cocaine comes from just three South American countries: Colombia, Peru and Bolivia. Much of it is headed for the United States and Europe. Law-enforcement officials...
Track marks
A new brew
MORE than 7,000 years ago, people living in the Middle East discovered that they could ferment grapes to make wine. The yeast that they unknowingly harnessed for the process can now be found in every vineyard on the planet....
Not an ex-parrot
Who’s a pretty Polly?
ONE of the problems suffered by a species on the brink of extinction is low genetic diversity. Initially this is caused by lack of numbers, but then it is exacerbated by the inbreeding which inevitably...
Green giant
Tolba, pulling the world together
“PERHAPS the single most successful international agreement to date has been the Montreal protocol,” declared Kofi Annan, then head of the United Nations, back in 2003. Agreed 16 years earlier,...
Money bags
“WE ARE on a wild ride,” Tom Mangas, the boss of Starwood, an American hotel group that owns the Westin and Sheraton brands, wrote to employees this week. He was referring to the bidding war over Starwood between Marriott,...
Hot in the city
GLOBALISATION has created a handful of metropolises that attract people, capital and ideas from all over the world, almost irrespective of how their national economy is doing. House prices in such places, unsurprisingly,...
Million-dollar babies
THAT a computer program can repeatedly beat the world champion at Go, a complex board game, is a coup for the fast-moving field of artificial intelligence (AI). Another high-stakes game,...
The Burma road
Ripe for investment
SPEND a day in Yangon, shuttling among new high-rises and bars before retreating to your boutique hotel, and you can almost believe that after decades of isolation, Myanmar is squarely on the road to...
Analyse this
WHAT is the most influential contemporary book about the world economy? An obvious choice is “Capital in the Twenty-First Century”, a 696-page analysis of inequality by Thomas Piketty, a French economist. There is another...
Ante upped
TEN years ago African bonds were a rare sight. Of all the countries south of the Sahara, only South Africa had ever sold a dollar-denominated bond to foreign investors. Since then, 16 more have. Excluding South Africa,...
Recovery phase
Hoping for a miracle
DISASTER struck Malaysia Airlines twice in 2014. In March, flight MH370 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, a Boeing 777 carrying 239 passengers and crew, disappeared an hour after take-off. Experts think...
Double-crossed
THE bookmaker on Aldgate High Street, on the fringes of London’s financial district, attracts its fair share of risk-takers. But across the road, at the offices of LCH.Clearnet, part of the London Stock Exchange Group (LSE),...
Blinded by the light
Some prospects are still dazzling
IN SOME respects this is a bumper era for solar energy. Last year, for the first time, the world invested more in photovoltaic cells than in coal- and gas-fired power generation combined....
Hail, César!
Mr Alierta found his chair comfortable
SIXTEEN years was surely too long for anyone to remain as boss of Spain’s largest telecoms company, Telefónica. During his spell in charge, César Alierta, 70, who at last agreed to...
Bucking the trend
AT THE beginning of the year the dollar was on a tear. In trade-weighted terms, it had risen by almost 20% since the start of July 2014. With the Federal Reserve tightening interest rates for the first time since 2006,...
Chairman of everything
SHORTLY before the annual session in March of China’s rubber-stamp parliament, the National People’s Congress, two curious articles appeared in government-linked news media. The first, published in a newspaper run by the...
Fighting on all fronts
THE prayers of Gyang Dahoro take on a decidedly political note. A dozen local chiefs, resplendent in traditional Nigerian dress, nod approvingly as he calls for protection from the “terrorists” who have “made us refugees...
The kingdom is king
IT MAY not be quite the country for the usual university experience: moving out of home; experimenting; dating. Nor does it have Egypt’s long history of scholarship, with the likes of the Al Azhar university, which has...
Jihadists on the run
LESS than a year after Islamic State (IS) burst onto the scene in June 2014, capturing Mosul and racing towards Baghdad, the jihadists stumbled. In early 2015 IS was pushed out of Kobane, in Syria, and Tikrit, in Iraq....
Silver in the deep
THE sea cucumber—a warty, sausage-shaped creature that feeds on the ocean floor—can sell for half its weight in silver in the markets of Guangzhou in southern China. This fleshy sea-slug is prized as a delicacy, a traditional...
Signs of happier times
Right this way, your table’s waiting
IT IS not easy being the only restaurant critic in Baghdad. “Before when I wrote, I would say when something is bad,” says Anas al-Sarraf, the entrepreneurial founder of the online Baghdad...
Let them weave their own
Recycling at work
GIKOMBA market, just north of Nairobi’s downtown, is a place to buy just about anything. At its entrance, where ragged minibuses splash their way through rutted red mud, stalls sell piles of pillows, plastic...
Dissociative disorder
UKRAINE’S efforts to reach an association agreement with the European Union have led to revolution, poisoned relations with Russia and caused war with Russian-backed separatists. After years of negotiations, Ukrainian and...
Living in limbo
No turning back
SWEDEN seems idyllic to Munire, a 19-year-old Afghan asylum-seeker, and her two sisters. The three orphans travelled on their own from Iran, where they were living illegally and had no access to education....
Once more around the bloc
TWO years ago a Ukrainian blogger, Mustafa Nayem, published a Facebook post calling people onto Kiev’s Maidan and launched the protest that toppled the government of Viktor Yanukovych. On March 27th Mr Nayem, who is now...
Doubt of the benefit
Seongnam reflects on its social pool
TO ITS current occupant, Seongnam’s town hall, a gleaming glass structure, stands as an edifice to wastefulness. It was built for 320 billion won ($280m) under a former conservative mayor...
The battle for Punjab
YEARS of terrorism have had a numbing effect on Pakistan. Most of the nearly 10,000 attacks the country has suffered in the past six years took merely hours to fall from the view of politicians and the media. It generally...
Men-at-alms
JUST north of Bangkok, the Thai capital, stands an enormous golden stupa designed to last 1,000 years. Its gleaming exterior is made not from smooth tiles but from 300,000 tightly-packed statues of the Buddha; 700,000 more...
Army manoeuvres
IT WAS an extraordinary moment, and seen by many as a happy culmination to a long, often bloody and always wrenching story: this week Myanmar swore in a new president as the titular head of the first civilian-led, democratic...
BANKING STORM: Unsustainable calm sparks fears of a market crash and ANOTHER crisis
FEARS are growing for some of the world's biggest investment banks, as experts warn mayhem could soon rip through markets over the coming weeks.
Source: Daily Express :: Finance Feed http://ift.tt/1pNw3...
Extra ARMED police likely to be deployed to all British airports following Brussels attack
IN THE wake of a series of terror attacks it’s likely more armed police will be placed in British airports for extra security.
Source: Daily Express :: Travel Feed http://ift.tt/1UWAD...
What’s in a badge?
Mine’s “We Shall Overcomb”
CONTACT with this year’s presidential politics leaves many Americans hankering for a scrub with carbolic soap. But a hefty minority are relishing the contest so much that the traders who sell souvenirs...
The biters bit
IT TAKES a lot to make a humdinger of a National Enquirer exposé look mundane; Donald Trump and his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, have just managed it. Mr Lewandowski, a former police officer known for his abusiveness...
Running against Roe
GAIL RIECKEN, a Democratic state representative in Indiana, is the grandmother of a five-year-old girl with Down’s syndrome, a genetic disorder causing intellectual disability and delay in physical development. Ms Riecken’s...
Heard on the trail
Character witness“I’ve had talks about being presidential, about toning it down a bit, appealing to a broader group of people.”
Ben Carson is advising Donald Trump. Politico
Dad jokes
“Donald Trump has had several foreign...
Handed a victory
ON JANUARY 11th Rebecca Friedrichs, a California teacher challenging the way public-sector unions do business, bounded out of the Supreme Court wearing a big smile. Ms Friedrichs’s lawyer, Michael Carvin, had just argued...
No, not one
“IF WE’RE gonna do what we did the other day,” Robert Bentley, the governor of Alabama, tells his aide in a recently released recording, “we’re gonna have to start locking the door.” Explaining himself, Mr Bentley—whose...
Ted Cruz, false hope
THESE are ghastly times for thoughtful Republicans. If Donald Trump is their presidential nominee in November’s general election, they increasingly fear that the businessman will lead them to a defeat of epic, Napoleon-in-Russia...
What’s in a yeast?
Source: Science and technology http://ift.tt/1RNjd...
When is the ISA deadline? How to make the most of your tax-free allowance
SAVERS across Britain are rushing to add to their tax-free savings before the ISA deadline next week. But how can you make the most of your tax-free allowance?
Source: Daily Express :: Finance Feed http://ift.tt/1RNb...
Bikini girl fishing on a boat reels in a DEADLY catch
THE GIRL looked like a keen fisherman but viewers weren’t expecting such a huge beast to take the bait.
Source: Daily Express :: Travel Feed http://ift.tt/1UuFY...
Tycoonomics
IN 1998 Peter Mandelson, a leading member of Britain’s then Labour government, said he was “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich as long as they pay their taxes.” Today Lord Mandelson is more uptight; he worries...
MetLife wins a legal battle to be deemed unimportant
LIFE-INSURANCE companies usually go to inordinate lengths to demonstrate their dullness. That makes MetLife’s chief executive, Steven Kandarian, extraordinary. He did what the head of no other big American financial firm...
WATCH: London transformed into tiny PLANET in mesmerising time-lapse video
THE hustle and bustle of London's most famous landmarks have been captured in a mesmerising 360° video that transforms the city into a tiny PLANET.
Source: Daily Express :: Travel Feed http://ift.tt/1UutN...
Chairman of everything
SHORTLY before the annual session in March of China’s rubber-stamp parliament, the National People’s Congress, two curious articles appeared in government-linked news media. The first, published in a newspaper run by the...
Six cruise HOT SPOTS across the Arabian Gulf
THE Gulf - or at least Dubai - used to be a popular stop-off on cruises that were heading from the Med to much farther afield.
Source: Daily Express :: Travel Feed http://ift.tt/1SAIq...
Fish swims through reef before getting swallowed WHOLE by this secret predator
THE OCEAN bed can conceal many predatory killers.
Source: Daily Express :: Travel Feed http://ift.tt/1SAIq...
Go-kart racing, LASER TAG and hovercraft: First glimpse of Norwegian Joy
EAST meets West on Norwegian Cruise Line's new ship for China Norwegian Joy with a combination of ultra-luxury and exciting activities such as the first go-kart racetrack at sea, laser tag and hovercraft bumper cars.
Source:...
Top 10 things to do in London that are FREE
TREAT yourself, 10 top London attractions for you to see, whatever the weather
Source: Daily Express :: Travel Feed http://ift.tt/1D2rI...
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