There had also been indications of construction activity on the rocket site's upper gantry platform "required for future launches of long-range rockets", it said.

BBC: US institute: North Korea 'testing at rocket site'

One came from the would-be National Unity and Social Justice Party, which has spent seven years awaiting approval for a platform aimed at strengthening relations between Muslims and Christians in strife-torn Upper Egypt.

ECONOMIST: Democracy can sometimes be too tame

Second, the LDP can block much of Mr Noda's legislative platform because of a debilitating feature of Japanese politics: the power of the upper house of the Diet (parliament).

ECONOMIST: Japan��s new leader

All the more so in the 1970s, when meteorology was a less exact science, bus-shelters ran no digitalised information, no one had mobile phones to explain what they were doing or where they were going or when they might be expected, and pre-Raphaelite hair, beards, flares, maxi-skirts and platform shoes turned any encounter with the elements (as any attempt to descend at speed from the upper deck) into serious drama, if not trauma.

ECONOMIST: Jack Scott and Reg Varney