William Underhill

Plans for new plants have created a steep demand for engineering talent, but the students have fled.

They start wondering whether the gain to their wealth and clout is worth the tossing at night.

The Sanger Institute was a modest and little known cluster of buildings in Cambridgeshire when genomics expert Tim Hubbard arrived in 1997. Burgeoning spending on genomic research has led to a rapid expansion—the institute now employs 800 people, more than double its size five years ago.

Italy's political leaders are older than most, which helps explain the slow, shuffling pace of change.

Former hostage Alan Johnston discusses his captivity in Gaza and whether he sees any signs of hope for the region.

Picture a former British prime minister who got mired in a Middle Eastern war alongside the United States. He's charming, but glib for some tastes. By his side: a manipulative wife.Surely it's Tony Blair.

A crop of smart firms are starting to employ older workers who want—and need—to labor longer.

Novelist Robert Harris draws an unflattering likeness of an ex-prime minister.

The engine driving the EU is 32,000 bureaucrats. That could be changing.

For the muslims of Clitheroe, collective worship has never been easy. It's been 40 years since the first Asians settled in the little town close to England's industrial heartland, but the 300-strong community has struggled ever since to find a suitable site for a mosque.

Poles are heading to Great Britain and Ireland in unprecedented numbers. Politicians are close behind.

In peaceful Switzerland, xenophobia is thriving.

As fears over migration, energy and terror grow, the European Union wants closer friends in sunny places.

Britain no longer dominates Anglophone education. Students want more, and the old empire is happy to give it to them.

For a European politician, Andrzej Lepper always cut an unlikely figure. Over the years, the Polish deputy prime minister has been convicted of slander and assault.

The gently rolling hills of western Hungary, home to bucolic woodlands and vineyards, do not much resemble the mean streets of Manhattan. But on one peaceful patch, a giant lattice of scaffolding rises up over the landscape, ready to support the façades of a seamy New York street and the swarms of actors who will populate it.

Nobody does rail travel like the Swiss.

Even by the standards of the digital age, it looks like a curious pairing. On one side is the venerable BBC, an 85-year-old broadcaster famous for its integrity.

Jeremy Grantham is used to assessing risk. As chairman of the Boston-based investment management company GMO, he's responsible for assets worth $140 billion.

Something weird is happening to the world's weather. Ski slopes in central Japan and the Alps were still green weeks after the start of the season. Giant hornets, once found only in the Far East, are now swarming in a warmer France.

Time was when the polar bears looked like the best hope for Churchill, Manitoba. The tiny settlement (population: 1,000) in northern Canada had seen the closure of a nearby military base, and its port was in decline.

John Nichol knows more than most about the horrors of captivity. Shot down during the first Gulf War in 1991, the British Royal Air Force navigator was taken prisoner, tortured and forced to denounce his own actions on Iraqi television during almost two months in captivity.

The continent's boomers are retiring, leaving a bitter legacy for the generation that comes next, which increasingly feels locked out of the European dream.

Only the scavenging seagulls love Ano Liossia. By some reckoning, the mountainous heap of unsorted trash in the Athens suburbs ranks as Europe's largest rubbish dump, covering some 101 hectares.

The scene is a London park in the mid-18th century. Bewigged figures make formal conversation in the foreground. In the distance, a company of soldiers is drilling in perfect formation.

Over the last 30 or so years, British entrepreneur Hermann Hauser has backed about 100 ideas, including three companies that have hit the billion-dollar mark.

In the new age of energy scarcity, geography shapes politics. That's why Jonas Gahr Store travels with his own maps. Not for Norway's foreign minister the standard picture of a Europe centered on the Alps and the warm south.

Ken Livingstone is no friend to the motorcar. London's mayor has spurned his official limo and imposed a whopping charge on drivers entering the city center.

It took a budget of almost $4 million, three years of investigations, the study of more than 600 exhibits and interviews with over 300 people. Every aspect of the affair was re-examined.

Siv Jensen is the blond-haired, blue-eyed, 30-something scourge of Norwegian politics. In a country that more than any other seems the very model of a modern, well-run European social-welfare state, she's an economic free-marketer, preaching the virtues of social conservatism and the politics of small government.