He and Ms Gregoire continue to run neck and neck.

ECONOMIST: Gubernatorial candidates are waging their own battles

When the company's 87-year-old proprietor learns that a muckraking local weekly is about to run a scathing article about a company employee, a beautiful Russian with a long swan-like neck and delicate Tartar eyes, who was killed by a suicide-bomber and whose body remains unclaimed, he directs the human-resources manager to find out what happened and to make amends, no matter what the cost.

ECONOMIST: New fiction

Perhaps most importantly, it gives the government the chance to try to break out of the awful run of bad news that has hung around its neck since the economy fell into recession and the Budget collapsed into omnishambles.

BBC: End to recession gives hope to coalition partners