Nowadays, the grass grows shin-high within the power station's security fence, the paintwork is peeling and the cement crumbling.

ECONOMIST: A long half-life

Its handicaps include corruption, moribund universities, organised crime, socially approved protectionism and a deeply ingrained hostility to competition (when a private rail operator, NTV, launched a new service from Rome's Ostiense station last week, passengers found their path to the trains blocked by a fence put there by a subsidiary of NTV's state-owned competitor).

ECONOMIST: Italians fret that they may end up going the same way as Spain

The TAM airlines Airbus A320 flight that originated in Porto Alegre in southern Brazil on Tuesday cleared the airport fence at the end of the runway and the busy highway but slammed into a gas station and a TAM building, causing an inferno.

NPR: Nearly 200 Feared Dead in Brazil Air Crash