Just a couple of Russian daisies for the chain:

One of the aims of the great Russian spelling reform of 1917 was apparently to make War and Peace shorter, thus saving paper. It is strange then that socialists in the rest of the world ended up trading c for k, which actually uses more ink.
If the [...]

The Herald (Glasgow):
Regions such as Catalonia, Quebec and Britanny and countries such as Ireland show that promoting and investing in a distinctive culture can reap dividends in tourism and profile.
Does that make nationalism tax-deductible?

Following on the tense Berlin climax of the beer-from-Mars post, I suspect that the Tiergarten may also provide the key to the following excerpt from a message posted by a furriner on behalf of the nice Catalan boys and girls who dress up as squatters and spraypaint daddy’s bank (but not mummy’s 4×4) instead of [...]

La Vanguardia’s front page lead this morning is the revelation that – far from being the spontaneous result of an evening down the pub – Samsung’s decision to shift operations to Slovakia was considered in advance and that the negotiations were conducted in secret! Honorary MBAs all round for the journalists responsible for exposing this [...]