吉尔福德的康庄大道

 

 

GUILDFORD is a prosperous town in London’s commuter belt and an unlikely setting for a seminar on crime. But one of the best sessions at the recent annual conference of the Royal Economic Society (RE....[ More ]

Central bankers 各国央行的总裁

 

 

CENTRAL bankers were compelling figures in the 1920s, not least because they preferred to operate in secret. The cloak was peculiarly attractive to Sir Montagu Norman, governor of the Bank of England ....[ More ]

不是闹着玩的

 

 

THIS newspaper recently conducted an unscientific survey of around two dozen Berliners who might be described as Germany’s elite. The various politicians, bureaucrats and businesspeople disagreed abo....[ More ]

Hunt the missing voter

 

 

IN SOME respects electioneering in Sudan would be instantly recognisable to the thousands of would-be MPs who set off on the campaign trail this week in Britain. Sudanese candidates, preparing for the....[ More ]

Brazil: Raining on Rio's parade

 

 

THEIR new-found hoard of oil still lies 7,000 metres (23,000 feet) beneath the Atlantic Ocean, but the signs are that it has already gone to Brazilian officialdom’s head. No sooner had Petrobras, the....[ More ]

The big green apple 绿色纽约

 

 

BOILER rooms are often dirty and steamy, but this one is pristine and cool. Fox Point is a spanking new 47-unit residential building in the South Bronx, one of the city’s poorest pockets. Two-thirds ....[ More ]

Tragedy in Smolensk 斯摩棱斯克惨案

 

 

POLAND’S awful history makes it no stranger to tragedy, grief and shock. But not for decades has it suffered a trauma such as the death of President Lech Kaczynski, along with dozens of other senior ....[ More ]

 

 

日本：大祸临头而不自知

FOR years foreign observers gave warning that Japan’s combination of economic stagnation and rising public debt was unsustainable. Over the past two decades the country has stumbled in and out of def....[ More ]

扫天：清走宇宙垃圾

 

 

ARISTOTLE believed that the heavens were perfect. If they ever were, they are no longer. The skies above Earth are now littered with the debris of dead satellites, bits of old rockets and the odd tool....[ More ]

网络时代书店面临的窘境

 

 

THESE are not easy times for booksellers. Borders, a big American one, ditched its boss in January and has closed stores, but is still at risk of collapse, some analysts say. The British chain of the ....[ More ]

Return of the overlord 霸主回归

 

 

 

LEE KUN-HEE is a man of few words. So when the 68-year-old decided to come out of court-induced purgatory this month to retake the helm of Samsung Electronics, now the world’s biggest technology comp....[ More ]

 

 

同心改变地球

IN 1975 scientists expert in a new and potentially world-changing technology, genetic engineering, gathered at Asilomar, on the Monterey peninsula in California, to ponder the ethics and safety of t....[ More ]

The celebrity effect 名人效应

 

IN MARCH 1998 the Coca-Cola Bottling Company announced the appointment of a most unlikely new director to its board: Evander Holyfield, a former heavyweight boxing champion (pictured above), best-know....[ More ]

Swinging Britain 摇摆不定的英国

 

 

GORDON BROWN has called a general election for May 6th to choose Britain's next government. Opinion polls suggest that the opposition Conservative Party will win. However the party will need a huge s....[ More ]

iPad登台亮相，蓄势待发

 

 

GIVEN all the hype ahead of the arrival of Apple’s new tablet computer, the debut on April 3rd of the iPad in America was perhaps inevitably going to feel like something of an anti-climax. There were....[ More ]

一代文豪还是欺世盗名

 

 

JAMES SHAPIRO follows his award-winning book on William Shakespeare, “1599”, which came out in 2005, with an unlikely subject: an investigation into the old chestnut that Shakespeare wasn’t the man....[ More ]

一如既往，否则俯首称臣？

 

 

NARRATORS of comic novels tend to fall into two categories. Either they are jaded insiders in a world they see is a sham, or they are hapless outsiders who long to be insiders, even though they sense ....[ More ]

Terror in Moscow 莫斯科恐怖活动

 

 

TWO terrorist bombers on the Moscow metro killed at least 37 people and injured 102 in the morning rush hour on Monday March 29th. The first explosion, which killed 22 people and injured 12, struck....[ More ]

Detroit's future 底特律的未来

 

 

ON MARCH 23rd Detroiters packed into a grand auditorium in the city’s midtown. Charles Pugh was there, the leader of the city council. Carol Goss was there, head of the Skillman Foundation, a busy lo....[ More ]

阿拉伯妇女权利

 

 

THE sight of hundreds of women cheering a proposed law banning child marriage, as they did on March 22nd in the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, was hardly amazing. No country has escaped the global trend tow....[ More ]

狡猾的迪克和美元

 

 

THE “Nixon shock” is not the name given to President Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974 amid the Watergate scandal, his bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam war or his audacious visit to commu....[ More ]

New start 新的开端

 

 

IT HAS been a good week for Barack Obama. After passing his long-awaited health care bill, he has now struck an equally long-awaited deal with Russia to reduce the two countries’ nuclear stockpiles. ....[ More ]

加拿大城市多面观

 

 

TIME was when the decision over where to put a new Canadian capital-markets regulator would have been automatic. Toronto, Canada’s most populous city and the capital of Ontario, the most populous pro....[ More ]