Micro Finder

CLOSELY tracking the Shanghai Composite Index in its downward slide in August was the reputation of China’s government for consistency, com...

ITALY’S state-controlled oil and gas company, ENI, has been in Egypt since it signed deals with Gamal Abdel Nasser, the country’s then dict...

Entertaining the masses in Spanish THE strongest selling-point for Univision is that it is the most popular Spanish-language broadcaster i...

INSIDE an obscure warehouse in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, the robot revolution is under way, but it is far from glamorous. The ...

STAFF line a wide aisle, cheering. Blue balloons bob in anticipation. Then the doors open and throngs of women rush in, clutching shopping ...

BRITAIN’S health department calls it “the silent killer”. Others have labelled it “the new smoking”. Lack of physical activity has crept up...

AT 6am on a sweltering Sunday the centre of Gurgaon, a city in northern India, is abuzz. Children queue for free bicycles to ride on a 4km ...

The road to dusty death THE widespread use in recent years of nets, insecticides and new drugs has helped to bring malaria under a measure...

IT IS Sunday night at the rooftop bar of the Wombat’s Hostel in Berlin and the tequila is starting to flow. But there is still time for a q...

SUCH was the status of German in the 19th century—for Europeans generally and for Jews in particular—that Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zio...

Armoured warfare on the eastern front THE hills surrounding Walbrzych, an old mining town in south-west Poland, have been a hive of activi...

Build your mosque somewhere else, says Mr Nauth THE neat rows of polished headstones and potted geraniums in the municipal cemetery of Man...

ON AUGUST 27th the coastal district of Rome, with a population of around 230,000, became the biggest administrative unit in Italy to be put...

ON STREET duty in Amsterdam, a 35-year-old Dutch police officer bemoans four years without a pay rise. “The economy is picking up, the rich...

WHEN Oliver Sacks was asked his profession, he often replied “Explorer”. He did not mean this in the geographical sense. As a boy he had de...

Purity. By Jonathan Franzen. Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 576 pages; $28. Fourth Estate; £20. “THE reader is a friend, not an adversary, no...

Herring Tales: How the Silver Darlings Shaped Human Taste and History. By Donald Murray. Bloomsbury Publishing; 272 pages; $26 and £16.99....

The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle. By Lillian Faderman. Simon and Schuster; 816 pages; $35 and £25. OF THE quarter of a milli...

Desk on stand by José Manuel de la Cerda. Lacquered and polychrome wood with painted decoration Source: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston/ ...

WHATEVER ails you, if you have to take two pills a day for it instead of one, you can blame metabolic clearance. Before they can get busy, ...