Plymouth Higher education: is Britain’s student housing bubble set to burst?Financial Times - Thomas Hale, Judith EvansThe original Derry’s was destroyed in the Plymouth blitz of 1941, but a department store reopened on the same site after the war and served the people of the English port city for almost 60 years. Its
Pigeons CIA unveils Cold War spy-pigeon missionsbbc.co.uk - Gordon Corera The CIA has declassified details of its secret Cold War spy-pigeon missions.
Carbon Pragmatism is the name of the game in greenwashing fightFinancial TimesThe necessary templates of taxonomy and data for sustainable finance are evolving gradually, while investor interest in products focused on environmental, social and governance practices has skyrocketed.
Students Taking the credit: can universities tackle academic fraud?Financial Times - Antonia CundyIn July 2017, Allison Harbin, an art history PhD graduate from New Jersey’s Rutgers University, uploaded several posts to her blog, titled “Why I left Academia”. In them, Ms Harbin claimed that an academic
Plastic Invent a greener milk carton for the worldFinancial Times - John GapperThe humble milk carton has been part of our lives for so long that it is easy to forget that it was a marvel when it first appeared in 1952. Tetra Pak’s technology made a billionaire of Hans Rausing, of
Saudi Arabia Oil veteran Gary Ross lifts lid on the art of price forecastsFinancial Times - David SheppardWhen Gary Ross heard reports of an oil tanker accident off the coast of Alaska, he picked up the phone. “I call the pilot of the port of Valdez and basically asked him, ‘Can you tell me what’s going on?’,”
Aspirin What Statistics Can and Can’t Tell Us About OurselvesThe New Yorker - Hannah FryIn the era of Big Data, we’ve come to believe that, with enough information, human behavior is predictable. But number crunching can lead us perilously wrong. Harold Eddleston, a seventy-seven-year-old
Tesla The great Tesla solar roof distractionFinancial TimesAlphaville’s resident Tesla watcher is away on holidays, but Bethany McLean’s “He’s full of shit” drop in Vanity Fair last weekend about the House of Musk’s dubious SolarCity investments should not go
Jeremy Corbyn Jeremy Corbyn’s plan to rewrite the rules of the UK economyFinancial Times - Jim Pickard, Robert Shrimsley“They looked like they were meeting the Gremlins”, is how one of Labour’s Treasury team remembers a meeting with senior UK civil servants ahead of the 2017 election. Jeremy Corbyn’s party was yet to surge
HS2 Why stop at parliament? Let’s get rid of the whole governmentFinancial Times - Henry ManceHistory is one damn thing after another; British politics is lots of damn things all at once. As a BBC journalist helpfully explained in the run-up to the Iraq war: “It’s like a complicated game of bluff,
Air Travel Flight shame: can airlines ever reduce their emissions?Financial Times - Janina Conboye, Leslie HookWhen cyclist Anna Hughes stopped flying 10 years ago, it seemed like a radical idea. But now the founder of Flight Free UK has convinced thousands of people to join her in her bid to mitigate the climate
European Union Britain is becoming Trump’s geopolitical chess pieceFinancial Times - Miriam González DurántezSomething worrisome is happening in the UK. I do not mean that Brexiter-in-chief Boris Johnson has become the prime minister. Or that he has announced the country will leave the EU in 10 and a half weeks,
Farmers in parched Loire valley grapple with climate change threatFinancial Times - Victor MalletClément Traineau gestured towards his field of stunted corn, explaining how the crop should at this stage of the summer stand taller than a man. “It’s done for,” the French farmer said, lamenting the drought
So you think you could run a vineyard?Financial Times - Alan LivseyGuy Howard was once a banker in Tokyo. In the 1990s, he never imagined how one day, he would be home in England, rising every day at dawn to manage a thriving wine estate. But as this year’s grape harvest
Australia blocks climate change push by Pacific Islands nationsFinancial Times - Jamie SmythAustralia has blocked Pacific Islands leaders from agreeing on a joint declaration to tackle climate change and phasing out coal in a move that critics warn could undermine its policy to engage with the
What happens when the world cannot rely on the US?Financial Times - Gideon RachmanThe watchword of the American security establishment since the cold war has been “credibility”. The idea is that if America is to maintain its status as a superpower and a world policeman, then its international
Rwanda: where even poverty data must toe Kagame’s lineFinancial Times - Tom Wilson, David BloodIn landlocked Rwanda, a small mountain state in the centre of Africa, strongman President Paul Kagame has overseen a miracle. From the ashes of a genocide in which some 800,000 people were killed in just
Germany: AfD surge threatened by party disunityFinancial Times - Guy ChazanGermany, says Andreas Kalbitz, is a sleeping beauty that is about to be kissed awake. The handsome prince entering her chamber is the Alternative for Germany, a populist hard-right party that has thoroughly
The Last Days of John Allen ChauOutside Magazine - Alex PerryOn November 21, 2018, Dependra Pathak, director general of police in the Andamans and Nicobars, an archipelago of paradise islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean, issued a press release headed “Death
FlipboardIcon version of the Flipboard logo Franky Zapata: Do I do this to get rich? No, I’m just a kid who wanted to flythetimes.co.uk - Ben Machell
Vertical gardens breathe life into the cityFinancial Times - Joy Lo DicoThey look, at first sight, like ancient monuments consumed by nature. But for the designers of the sibling towers of Bosco Verticale in Milan, the trailing greenery is not decay but a sign of the future.
Easter Egg The Secret History of ‘Easter Eggs’The New York Times - By DAVID POGUEEvery car can accelerate, brake and turn. But only the Tesla Model X can put on a three-minute dance performance. The windows open, the speakers blast a holiday carol, the exterior lights flash in sequence,
A Boeing Code Leak Exposes Security Flaws Deep in a 787's GutsWIRED - Andy Greenberg Late one night last September, security researcher Ruben Santamarta sat in his home office in Madrid and partook in some creative googling, searching …
Lex In Depth: Bayer’s €50bn blunderFinancial Times - Ralph AtkinsAspirin, cancer medicines, products to boost crops: healthcare and agriculture group Bayer is integral to German society and industry. It even lends its name to the local Bundesliga football club, Bayer
Boris Johnson’s Brexit bellowing may not make the EU blinkFinancial Times - Robert ShrimsleyIf British politicians are so certain of their positions, you have to ask why is everyone shouting so much? In the days since Boris Johnson’s election as Conservative party leader, the debate over Brexit
5G: how the airwaves became an ‘electromagnetic cash cow’Financial Times - Nic FildesHow do you put a price on a telecoms spectrum licence? Chinese operators have picked them up for free — part of Beijing’s attempt to have a national rollout of 5G. Yet in parts of Europe recent auctions
No-deal Brexit: how prepared are the EU and UK?Financial Times - Mehreen Khan, Jim Pickard, Janina ConboyeUK prime minister Boris Johnson has ordered ministers and officials in his new government to “turbo-charge” preparations for a no-deal Brexit, unnerving currency markets and businesses — and leaving EU
