The first of these is due in only six months' time and the joint challenge is to save from slow extinction a party which until 1978 was modern France's most powerful voice on the left.

ECONOMIST: The party is probably on the skids, whoever runs it

Would-be business titans need to learn that economic history is punctuated with crises and disasters, that booms inevitably give way to busts, and that the business cycle, having survived many predictions of extinction, continues to prey on the modern economy.

ECONOMIST: Schumpeter

Scientists in New Zealand say they have linked the modern-day decline of a common forest shrub with the local extinction of two pollinating birds over a century ago.

BBC: New Zealand scientists record 'biodiversity breakdown'