Leaders
How mergers go wrong
It is important to learn the lessons from the failures and successes of past mergers
A more realistic Russia
If it could translate its new foreign-policy thinking into practice, it might truly deserve its seat at the G8 table
Blowing smoke
Americans’ obsession with punishing tobacco firms is wrong-headed, and an obstacle to rational debate about illegal drugs
Forlorn Fiji
Peace and stability will not return until the country’s ethnic groups agree to share power
Labour’s new prudence
Tony Blair’s search for a new centre-left philosophy has given way to an old-fashioned faith in the virtues of public spending
Letters
Briefing
The Digital dilemma
Our new series of six briefs looks at big mergers of the recent past: what was the strategy behind them, and did it work? We start with Compaq’s ill-fated takeover of Digital Equipment, the biggest merger in the history of the computer industry. As companies so often do, Compaq tried to buy a new future. So was the deal bad strategy, or just bad timing?
The flies swarm in
Use of the Internet and mobile phones is exploding in China. It does not necessarily spell the end of the authoritarian state
Britain
Health
Intensive care
Disease
Cluster fluster
Defence and foreign affairs
Poor relations
Education
Teacher’s turn
Crime
All right, Jack?
Transport
Prescott’s prize
Public spending
Payout time
Celtic nationalism
Salmond’s leap
United States
The New York Senate race
Oy vey, Hillary
The California housing market
Squeezed out
Social Security reform
The battle of the boffins
The Americas
Business
Infrastructure exchanges
Kobe’s dream
North American railways
Stop me before I merge again
The paper industry
Printing cash
Japanese exports
Advance of the amazonesu
Japanese telecoms
A banana for the gorilla
Finance & economics
Trade
Still bananas
Insurance
The state of Allstate
ECONOMICS FOCUS
E-money revisited
The euro
Resistant
Financial analysis
Downgraded
European stock exchanges
Two into three
Science & technology
Culture
Literary biography
In pursuit
Hong Kong cinema
Thunderclouds and flying tigers
American sculptors
The heart of the matter
Eating