Like the aliens browsing through refuse for weaponry and food, the film trawls for visual tactics of every kind, from news footage to clips from security cameras, and the result is something new: a startling, redoubtable thriller constructed on the cheap from a decaying world.

NEWYORKER: District 9

For one thing, the senator from Arizona is a redoubtable campaigner.

ECONOMIST: John McCain

Instead, they snipe at his foreign minister, the redoubtable Makiko Tanaka, a woman whose outspokenness is unsettling those who prefer Japan's usual ultra-cautious diplomacy.

ECONOMIST: Japanese politics

After he skewed one and JP Duminy was lbw cheaply having missed a sweep, the redoubtable Mark Boucher shared 78 with Amla before mis-timing to cover which brought about the declaration.

BBC: Hashim Amla hits double ton as South Africa lead India

The second worry is that the problems of the Italian economy are so deep-rooted that not even the redoubtable Mr Monti can get it moving again, after more than a decade of virtual stagnation.

ECONOMIST: Italians fret that they may end up going the same way as Spain

Still the occasional boundary offered a glimmer of hope, with 33 needed from 16, but the redoubtable Flintoff yorked Denesh Ramdin to claim the seventh wicket.

BBC: Flintoff inspires England triumph

In an 11th-hour rescue attempt, Mr Vajpayee sacked the city's chief minister and replaced him with India's redoubtable information minister, Sushma Swaraj, who began checking up on absentee police supervisors in a series of well-publicised late-night inspections.

ECONOMIST: Knowing your onions in India

One who has already said he might run is a former one-term congressman, Michael Flanagan, who is most famous for beating that redoubtable old Democratic baron, Dan Rostenkowski, after he was indicted for corruption in 1994.

ECONOMIST: Illinois politics