As they have realised that nothing can stop them, however, they have grown franker.

ECONOMIST: Indonesia

In franker moments Mr Chen confessed to abiding guilt over Miss Wu's disability.

ECONOMIST: Banyan

But recently a franker assessment by the banks themselves, using international standards of measurement, has brought official figures closer and closer to those earlier unofficial estimates.

ECONOMIST: Casino capital

And he has become franker about his own private life.

ECONOMIST: Giuliano Amato, Italy��s agile stopgap

How much more persuasive this book would have been if Mr Crooke had curbed his enthusiasm, or been just a bit franker about the blemishes on the movements he admires.

ECONOMIST: Islam and the West

Cuba-watchers reckon that, after a slow start, the debate has been franker and more wide-ranging than the last such exercise held in the early 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the island's sponsor.

ECONOMIST: Cuba's economy: Raúl's talking cure | The