The World’s strangest-looking plane Airbus Beluga, which got its name because of its resemblence to the species of whale, landed at Heathrow Airport at 11:04 on Monday carrying spare parts from Toulouse to repair a damaged British Airways plane that has been left stranded at Heathrow since April after a minor collison at the airport. Airbus Beluga left Heathrow at 17:40 to return to Toulouse according to Fightradar 24. Continue reading Airbus Beluga delivers parts for BA at Heathrow

Nobel Prize-winning Economics, David McWilliams, who not only trained as an economist but also worked as a central banker, on the financial markets, and founder of Kilkenomics – the world’s first festival of economics and stand-up comedy, take the fun out money, then he is the exception that proves the rule: a man who could not write a boring sentence if he tired Tom Holland. Money is everything,  but  not one man in a million understands the nature of money. It brings freedom and it takes away. It inspires and corrupts us. But what is money? Is it main thing … Continue reading Money humans invented to negotiate

Ex-Wirecard boss Markus Braum and two other executives have been ordered to pay €140 million plus interest in damages to defunct payment Group’s administrator over violations of professional duties. The Board’s decision was “untenable and at odds with the duty of care of a prudent businessman”. In the civil suit brought by  Wirecard Administrator, Michael Jaffe, Markus Braun, former CFO Alexander von Knoop, and former CPO Susanne Steidi have been found personally liable for losses from unsecured loans to allegedly fraudulent business partners in Asia. Wirecard collapsed into insolvency in 2020 after disclosing  that half its revenue and € 1.9 bn in … Continue reading Wirecard executives fined €140 million

The innocent victims and survivors of the Grenfell Tower are becoming sadly used to hearing of how they were let down, calamitously by those supposed to keep them safe, Profits put before safety, cladding warnings ignored, Manufacturer’s doctored testing and decades of failure by the government and  parts of the construction industry led directly to the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire disaster that killed 72 people, according to a damning final 1700-page report of a public enquiry. The fire started in a fridge in a fourth floor kitchen of the recently refurbished high-rise apartment block with new cladding  in West London, … Continue reading Arconic, Celotex & Kingspan cynically exploited  the industry’s lack of knowledge

Chocolate producers have traditionally used the beans from cocoa fruit and disposed of the rest. Food scientists in Switzerland have come up with a way to make chocolate using the entire cocoa fruit rather than just the beans and without using sugar.According to the Chocolate, developed at Zurich’s prestigious Federal Institute of Technology by scientist Kim Mishra and his team includes the cocoa fruit pulp, the juice, and the husk, or endocarp. The key to the new chocolate lies in its very sweet juice, which tastes, “very fruity, a bit like pineapple” Mishra said. This juice has 14 per cent … Continue reading Mishra’s latest innovations helping Switzerland the land of chocolates

India was the forgotten heart of the Ancient world. Eminent historian, William Dalrymple’s new history The Golden Road’s penetrating and exhilarating account of how India’s cultural soft power transformed Asia and the Middle East. Indian ideas in mathematics, philosophy, science and art were the crowning achievements of the ancient world.  For a millennium and a half, from about 250BC to 1200 AD, India was a confident exporter of its diverse civilisation, creating around it a vast empire of ideas, an “Indosphere” where its influence was predominant. During this period, the rest of Asia was the willing recipient of a mass- … Continue reading India an economic civilizational superpower reshaped the world

Shanghai-based PDD Holdings, the Chinese group  trading under Temu, the low-cost e-commerce site whose stock dived last week, has amassed the $38bn cash pile of any listed company in the US that does not pay a dividend or buy back shares. PDD’s share price fell 31 per cent last week after it warned that record profitability was likely to decline and ruled out dividends or buybacks. The Ultra-low-cost online flea market  Temu, generated $6bn of operating cash flow in the second quarter, taking its holdings of cash and short-term investments to $39bn, with a further $9.3bn of longer-term investments.  The … Continue reading Temu’s owner has $38bn cash pile

Simon Russell (63) having spent playing some of the great ( and many minor roles) Shakespearean roles,  on stage, film, televisions and Radio – ranging from Winston Churchill to Stalin, George Smiley to King Arthur. But ever since his appearance at school as a glamorous Desdemona, complete with false eyelashes that rendered him half-blind, he has been captivated by Shakespeare. In A Piece of Work, Russell Beale tries to get under the skin of the playwright and find out what interested him. Was Shakespeare an instinctive “conservative” or, rather, gently subversive? How collaborative was he? Did he add a line … Continue reading Playing Shakespearan roles