For most of the past year, the European Central Bank (ECB) has made vast quantities of cash available to euro-zone banks at a fixed rate of 1%, which in turn has pushed down mortgage rates.

ECONOMIST: Rigidities in the labour market make recovery even harder

The rate of distressed sales (of foreclosed properties or short-sales) is declining, which in turn means the number of cheaper homes being sold off, as a proportion of the total number of sales, is falling, giving a boost to average prices.

FORBES: Beware The Bubble In Homebuilders As Housing Prices Rise

To this end, Aerovironment is working on a system of miniature gyroscopes and air-flow detectors to measure Black Widow's speed and rate of turn.

ECONOMIST: A personal eye in the sky

The failure rate is low compared to the two-thirds of wafers that turn out to be unusable, and elimination of the lengthy process of growing the crystal from which wafers are cut could reduce manufacturing time from months to days.

ECONOMIST: Semiconductors

All the actors involved turn in first-rate performances, but much of the success of the film depends on the believability of Allen's character as she discovers passion and dares to be different.

CNN: Review: 'Pleasantville' more than pleasant -- it's brilliant

Their central estimate is that the taxable income elasticity for this group is 0.46, which implies a revenue-maximizing tax rate on earned income of 56%.29 This in turn (accounting for NICs and indirect taxes) corresponds to an income tax rate of 40%.

FORBES: There Really is a Laffer Curve

Such a swift about-turn would have been more difficult if interest-rate decisions had remained in the hands of a politician, sensitive to the opinion polls.

ECONOMIST: Inflation

Now the internal rate of return, or IRR, matters to us, because it in turn determines the terms of the so-called contract for difference agreed by the government with EDF, which in turn determines the price that consumers (us again) will pay for nuclear-generated electricity.

BBC: Why Treasury may reject nuclear option