Briefing

Antarctic science

To coldly go

Scientists travel to the bottom of the world to investigate the climate, the universe and the limits of life itself

Robert Mugabe

The man behind the fist

Zimbabwe's despotic leader, a man of puzzlingly different identities, is a past master at holding on

America's housing market

Cracks in the façade

America's riskiest mortgages are crumbling. How far will the damage spread?

Iraq

Mugged by reality

How it all went wrong in Iraq

Family capitalism

Our company right or wrong

Founders and their families often exert extraordinary power over public companies, even when they own only a minority of the shares

The Chirac legacy

It all went wrong

After 12 years of unkept promises, President Jacques Chirac leaves a confused France longing for someone completely different

Stock exchanges

Dodgy tickers

Accurate information can make—or break—exchanges

Subprime lending

Rising damp

Will turbulence in America's subprime mortgage market spread?

Sterling weakness

Bad company

The pound stumbles as currency speculators cut back on risk

Buttonwood

We all fall down

Why investors were not as diversified as they had thought

Markets

It's behind you

Should twitchy markets scare us?

Governing China

Caught between right and left, town and country

A new law on property rights defines the ideological struggle at the heart of China's economic reform