World View

"The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent,'' said John Maynard Keynes (or maybe it wasn't him, but no matter).

Here we go again.

Zika, the mosquito-borne virus spreading through the Americas that has been linked to thousands of babies born with underdeveloped brains (microcephaly), is just the latest new disease to spread panic around the world.

"Europe has forgotten that history is fundamentally tragic,'' said Manuel Valls, the French Prime Minister.

Sending Colombia's 51-year-old civil war has taken a long time.

Five years ago this month, the "Arab Spring'' got under way with the non-violent overthrow of Tunisia's long-ruling dictator, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali.

Last week, a Thai cosmetics company called Seoul Secret launched a new beauty product, Snowz, and got locally famous Thai actress Cris Horwang to appear in the promotional video.

Lech Walesa, a national hero 26 years ago for his role in ending communist rule in Poland as the leader of Solidarity, has little political power in the country today, but he still has his voice.

There is an old fairground game called Whac-a-Mole. You whack a (fake) mole on the head and drive it down into its hole - and instantly one or more other moles pop up out of other holes.

Independent London journalist Gwynne Dyer surveys the state of the world in 2015 and finds it was a pretty good year for most people in most places. 

If the Taliban were not so busy fighting the rival Islamic State jihadis who began operating in Afghanistan early this year, they might now be within reach of overthrowing the Afghan Government that the Western powers left behind when they pulled out most of their troops last year.

‘‘I'm going to try to form a government,'' Spain's Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said as the results of the national election came in on Sunday night, ‘‘but it won't be easy.''

Abu Muhammad al-Golani is an Islamist fanatic, a head-chopper (although only in moderation) and the leader of the Nusra Front, an al Qaeda affiliate that is classified by the United States as "terrorist''.

The climate deal almost 200 countries agreed to in Paris at the weekend was far better than most insiders dared to hope even a month ago.

President Barack Obama spoke this week about a mass shooting in the United States for the 17th time in the past seven years.

The key fact is the Russian plane, by Turkey's own admission, was in Turkish airspace for precisely 17 seconds.