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

Robert Harris describes a prime minister’s love affair as the first world war looms, summer of 1914, a world on the brink of catastrophe.  Imagine how powerful and successful older man can fall in love for a much younger woman, who is flattered and moved by attention. In London, 26-year-old Venetia Stanley – aristocratic, clever, bored, reckless – is having a love affair with none other than the Prime Minister, H.H. Asquith, a man more than twice her age. He writes to her obsessively, sharing the most sensitive matters of state. As Asquith reluctantly leads the country into war with … Continue reading Sexual intrigue turns into a matter of national security

Tim Park’ story of discovery and self-discovery in a superbly crafted satisfying novel and his study of the aftermath of an affair – the oldest game in town- between Dan Burrow, the headmaster of a public school in Yorkshire and our narrator and Julia, the mother of two of his pupils. Or better say former affair and former head master, because we join Dan’s story when it’s all over, and he is combing through the wreckage. He’s recreating a walk he and Julia undertook years before, from Konstanz in Germany to Como in Italy. That earlier walk also followed the … Continue reading Combing through the wreckage after an affair

Warren Buffet’s Group Berkshire has become the first publicly traded Us company outside the tech sector to be valued at $1tn, joining an exclusive club dominated by Apple and Microsoft. The conglomerate has been transformed by Buffett over six decades powering into almost every corner of the US economy, including railcars over 32, 000 miles of track across the US, owns parts manufacturer for Boeing, and also runs one of the biggest US motor insurers. Buffet, now 94, spent a year selling stocks including half the stake in Apple that triggered large profit for Berkshire. Shareholders have rewarded Berkshire, pushing … Continue reading Berkshire is valued at $1tn

Two Delta Air Lines workers who were servicing  a Delta Plane  at the airline’s wheel and brake shop at Hartsfield – Jackson, Atlanta International Airport have been killed and one seriously injured after an accident at an airline maintenance facility shortly after 5:00 local time on Tuesday. According to local medical authorities Mirko Marweg 58 and Luis Aldarondo, 37  were identified as the dead men. In a statement, the airline said : “The Delta family is heartbroken at the loss of two team members and the injury of another following an incident this morning at the Atlanta Technical Operations Maintenance … Continue reading Two Delta Airlines maintenance workers killed while servicing plane

Volcano erupts in the area south of the Iceland’s capital Reykjavik for the sixth time since December 2023, red-hot lava spewing into the air. The Iceland Meteorological Office said the eruption began at 21:26 local time (22:16BST) following several earthquakes. Grindavik, nearby fishing village where 4, 000 residents were evacuated. Continue reading Volcano erupts in Iceland