Austria's trademark dessert was the subject of a seven-year legal battle Vienna's coffee houses are places "where time and space are consumed, but only the coffee is found on the bill". So reads the UNESCO description of these institutions. Time and space may satisfy a Viennese philosopher but for most, a wedge of cake complements caffeine far better, and none more so than sachertorte. According..
The practice gives a micro dose of jet lag, and can even be harmful Sometimes the decision to change a country's time zone can be political. Despite its vastness, all of China runs on Beijing time - a decision taken by Mao Zedong in 1949 to instil unity. (Pity the poor people of Xianjang province in China's far west, where sometimes the sun does not rise until 10am, and lunch is taken as the sha..
But avoiding it means tough policy choices For the first time in history, the Earth has more people over the age of 65 than under the age of five. In another two decades the ration will be two-to-one, according to a recent analysis by Torsten Sløk of Deutche Bank. The trend has economists worried about everything from soaring pension costs to "secular stagnation" - the chronically weak growth th..
Not yet. But precautions are needed "Be afraid. Be very afraid," says a character in "The Fly", a horror film about a man who turns into an enormous insect. It captures the unease and disgust people often feel for the kingdom of cockroaches, Zika-carrying mosquitoes and creepy-crawlies of all kinds. However, ecologists increasingly see the insect world as something to be frightened for, not frig..
Bad news for Canadian conservative and an Ulster liberal Here are two stories about religion, free speech and higher education in the United Kingdom. Both make troubling news for anyone who thinks that students should be exposed to a broad range of ideas, including some they won't agree with. One concerns a global celebrity, the other a man who is relatively little known outside his own speciali..
Revealing one's master plan too early can be dangerous By the time Chinese censors finally allowed a James Bond film to be shown in a mainland cinema, in 2007, the franchise was more than four decades old. Only thanks to rampant piracy were Chinese familiar with the British spy, commonly referred to by his code name, Ling ling qi. Chinese leaders would do well to study a plot device beloved in t..
Even if they do, this will not fix what ails the border A few hours after Donald Trump tweeted about "the attempted Invasion of Illegals, through large Caravans, into our Country," Carmen sat in a church office in suburban Maryland, quietly sobbing. Five years ago she and her son, who was then three, fled from El Salvador and her violent husband. "It's difficult to leave your country," she says...
Rich-world scientists conduct questionable experiments in poor countries The announcement in November of the editing of the genomes of two embryos that are now baby girls, by He Jiankui, a Chinese DNA-sequencing expert - brought much righteous, and rightful, condemnation. But it also brought a lot of tut-tutting from the outside world about how this sort of things was to be expected in a place l..
The social media network has endured endless scandals, but deeper problems lurk January has been a bad month for Facebook. First came a story showing that the social network has spent years in intentionally profiting from, and refusing to refund, accidental purchases made by children. Kids as young as five were spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars on Facebook, according to the Centre f..
It will pit the world's big powers against each other "SATISFACTION GUARANTEED!" promises the seller of "The Law and Policy of the World Trade Organization" (WTO). The magic of e-commerce means that the doorstopper can be exported from America to Tajikistan for a cool $35.95 (plus shipping). A new initiative on digital trade at the WTO strives to add to the laws and policies described within. Bu..
A DOJ corruption investigation into Alstom ended in 2014 with GE's $17bn takeover of the French company Over the past decade, American legal and regulatory authorities have subjected scores of large foreign companies to extraterritorial actions. Paying large fines, which can top $1bn, has often been the only way finally to settle such accusations of serious misconduct outside America, typically ..
The government is belatedly beefing up its prevention measures In the end, God turned out to be a 20-year-old amateur hacker living with his parents in a small western German town. Throughout December God, or "G0d", to give him his proper Twitter handle, had leaked the phone numbers, addresses and, in some cases, private photos and credit-card details of nearly 1,000 German politicians, celebrit..
The new geopolitics of the Middle East It did not take long for America's announced withdrawal from Syria to be felt across the Middle East. The Syrian regime, along with its Russian and Iranian allies, rejoiced. Arab states hurried to make up with Syria's leader, Bashar al-Assad. The Arab League will soon debate his return to the fold. America's Kurdish allies, crying betrayal, urged him to hel..
The tech giant revises down its earnings forecast because of poor sales in China Investors were skittish as 2018 drew to a close, fretting about global economic prospects. Fears about a slowdown in China have swirled in recent weeks: the pace of GDP growth fell over the course of 2018, as did retail and vehicle sales. The purchasing managers' index survey, released on January 2nd, suggested that..
They mostly want to change the world, not just fathom it "The solution in Vietnam", said William DePuy, an American general in 1966, "is more bombs, more shells, more napalm." But where exactly to drop it all? To help guide the bombing, the Pentagon's whizz kids calculated the threat posed by different hamlets to the American-backed government in South Vietnam. Fed with data capturing 169 criter..