William Underhill

Britain's new prime minister, David Cameron, made a lot of promises on the stump about how he'd transform British society. If the first 100 days are any gauge, he doesn't plan on waiting.

Last week clashes across Northern Ireland stirred memories of the bad old days. In Belfast, protesters hurled Molotov cocktails and set a car aflame, injuring more than 80 officers; police returned fire with rubber bullets and a water cannon. TV news images have people asking: are the old Catholic-versus-Protestant conflicts going to derail Northern Ireland's peace process?

John Browne knows a thing or two about cost-cutting. As BP's boss for 12 years starting in 1995, he oversaw an ambitious expansion program that transformed the company's fortunes while trimming staff. In the words of his successor, Tony Hayward, Browne's management style "made a virtue of doing more for less."

Tony Blair has joined a long line of politicians—like Mikhail Gorbachev and Margaret Thatcher—whose international reputations stayed bright long after disillusion set in back home. Why is Blair beloved abroad and disliked in Britain?

Europe's economic distress could be China's opportunity. In the past, the country has proved a hesitant investor in the continent, but figures show a 30 percent surge in new Chinese projects in Europe last year. And these days Europe looks ever more tempting.

The British government has finally released a comprehensive report on the 1972 Bloody Sunday massacre that killed 15 unarmed civil-rights protesters. (It fills 5,000 pages and took 12 years.) But its authors may find they've traded peace for truth.

Four thousand miles of ocean won't insulate the U.K. from BP's catastrophic mess in the Gulf of Mexico. The woes of Britain's second-largest company are sure to spill into the country's already faltering economy. Last week Business Secretary Vince Cable warned of "major, indirect effects on the British economy" from the spill, with investors among the principal victims.

Skeptics are predicting that the financial crisis could mean the euro's demise, but the currency's champions can still find cause for optimism. This month, after a bitter economic struggle, Estonia should see its application formally approved to become the 17th nation to adopt the euro. Cue sighs of relief in Brussels, where EU Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn declared, "There is no queue out of the euro; there is a queue into the euro."

Didier Drogba is something of a demigod in the Ivory Coast. Not only is he a star player with English football champions Chelsea, he's also the adored peacemaker who helped convince his country that its five-year-long civil war was truly at an end by insisting that a vital World Cup qualifying match in 2007 be played in the formerly rebel north.

Now that the question of who will lead the country is settled, politicians can get down to answering the more important query: can a coalition government work in Britain?

For the new-look Conservatives of David Cameron, the watchword is "change." This isn't the doctrinaire movement of Margaret Thatcher or the backward-looking party of its older supporters. But one characteristic at least unites the modern Tories with their past.

Consider Britain's two new leaders, bound together because neither won a parliamentary majority. Both come from privileged backgrounds and attended top private schools and universities. Neither cares much for dogma; both favor a liberal line on a range of issues from civil liberties to gay marriage. So why shouldn't David Cameron and Nick Clegg get along?

David Cameron's Conservatives take power again. But at what cost?

With the right spin doctor, Gordon Brown could seem an easy politician to admire. This was the smart, serious-minded Scot who took prudence as his watchword in his successful management of the British economy; the man who oversaw the country's longest period of economic growth and averted global catastrophe through his handling of the financial crisis. He was the clergyman's son who thrived on hard work and liked to talk of the "moral compass" offered by his parents' example.

Voter distaste for grads of the posh school is fading.

Philip Pullman makes an unlikely hate figure. A 63-year-old grandfather, he speaks with the polite precision of the schoolteacher he once was, tough-minded but fair.

David Cameron will probably be the next prime minister. He'll soon come to regret it.

David Cameron got the most votes, but he might not be the next British prime minister.

Britons have traditionally thought a split Parliament was a recipe for disaster. Now, they're changing their tune.

Dark-horse candidate Nick Clegg is poised to upend the U.K's two-party system.

When Prime Minister Gordon Brown agreed last year to take part in Britain's first-ever televised election debates, which begin next week, the result seemed certain.

Why Dublin isn't burning like Athens.

The popular former prime minister Tony Blair wants to help his successor win reelection. Thanks, but no thanks.

For Britain's conservatives, it came as a pre election gift: workers at British Airways are staging a series of strikes that threat-en to cripple the airline.

By William UnderhillChina has become famous in recent years for its ask-no-questions checkbook diplomacy, especially toward resource-rich nations in the developing world.

When the EU's Lisbon Treaty finally took effect last year, the bloc's leaders hailed the start of a new era.  For the first time, the 27-nation union--representing 450 million people and a third of the world economy--could look forward to matching international clout.

Before the global financial crisis, Europe's cooperative banks were seen as the refuge of the tradition-minded customer. Only one in five ­Europeans used their services; most consumers flocked to their mainstream commercial rivals whose mid-decade profits and stocks were soaring.But co-ops have fared much better than their commercial counterparts during the downturn, in part because many shunned the dodgy vehicles that brought disaster down upon ­investor-owned banks.

To generations of Londoners, the badlands began at the City's eastern frontier, just beneath the gleaming towers of the financial district. To stray beyond was to enter the darker world of the East End, the heartland of rough, tough Cockney culture.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown thought the Iraq commission would insulate him. Oops.

The brush strokes are bold, the paint is applied in heavy swirls, and the colors have a dramatic intensity rarely found in nature. Painted in 1889, a year before his death, Mountains at Saint-Rémy could only be the work of Vincent van Gogh, then a patient in a French asylum for the mentally ill.