But to regard the British Midlands and the banlieues of Paris as ungoverned spaces would be stretching a point.

ECONOMIST: Failed states

Power grew up in the British Midlands, one of six children in a family that had a 50% share of a 150-year-old wire-strapping business.

FORBES: Catch and Release

The study, published Monday in the journal Chronic Illness, was funded by the British charity Midlands Asthma and Allergy Research Association.

CNN: Kids with nut allergies feel teased, excluded

Earlier this year America's Dominion Resources sold East Midlands, a British distributor it had only recently bought.

ECONOMIST: Electricity

It was Margaret Thatcher's government, a Conservative government, that introduced the Single European Act that allowed British businesses here in Birmingham, in the Midlands, to invent things, manufacture things and then export them completely freely into the largest consumer market in the world.

BBC: Transcript of Nick Clegg interview

British Transport Police and officers from the West Mercia and West Midlands forces helped in the operation.

BBC: Sixty-two held for violent disorder in Nuneaton

And as a result of what we were able to uncover in East Midlands Airport, with the very strong cooperation of British authorities, we were able to also then take additional steps.

WHITEHOUSE: Full Briefing on Security Alert

Since the start of the recession, pub beer sales in the Midlands are down by a third, according to the British Beer and Pub Association.

BBC: Last orders for England's pubs?

This latest offer represents a premium of just 6% to the firm's closing share price on 1 August, before BMI British Midland's "surprising" decision to withdraw Heathrow and East Midlands services from Belfast International, part of the TBI portfolio.

BBC: French firm launches airports bid