But to dismiss these developments would be a mistake, for something is under way which could have far-reaching consequences for men’s role in our society.The switch in male and female traditional roles is starting at school. Girls outnumber and outperform boys at school and at university. Now the roles are reversing, or at the very [...]

Unpublished figures show that customs officers seized more than a ton (1,000kg) of heroin – worth pounds 90m at street prices – this year from Turkish traffickers, which is twice the quantity discovered in 1994. JASON BENNETTO
Crime Correspondent
Up to 20 Turkish gangs are running multi-million pound heroin rackets, stretching from London to Glasgow, [...]

Security consultants are warning of an upsurge in attacks over the next few years, as more and more people use the Net.On the hardware side, even more powerful PCs will emerge, but there are unlikely to be any great innovations Sony will enter the PC market for the first time. Other European telecoms giants may [...]

Sparky was a Collie – the family pet of my childhood.A sudden memory of another Christmas: Sparky, dashing through a snow- covered field, a trail of paw-holes behind her Snow on her pointy nose, her dark widow’s peak. Ecstatic barking.”I can’t remember anything in particular,” I tell him. “But I’m sure I did, I’ve done [...]

Football
Terry Fenwick, the manager of Portsmouth, has returned to his old club, Swindon, to sign the 21-year-old defender, Andy Thomson, for pounds 75,000. Adelaide: South Australia 331 (P Nobes 56) and 252 for 9 (D Lehmann 71); Queensland 200 (A Border 79, T May 5-86). Elliot carried his bat for 104 in the [...]

Until, with hindsight, they realised they already had.”With the ending of the Cold War, state secret services are turning their attentions to industrial espionage to give their own companies an edge on foreign competitors,” says Ms Upton. “We tell travellers to assume their hotel rooms are bugged or their fax messages are being intercepted whenever [...]

Dr Brian Mawhinney, the Tory chairman, has already had a go at linking the abolition of the legislative functions of hereditary peers (though not of the peers themselves) with a possible abolition of the monarchy. Oddly enough, Dr Mawhinney may be more right than he realises.When the Labour backbencher Emrys Hughes introduced his Abolition of [...]

Mr Metcalfe has decided to pare back the business to its gold exploration.Most peripheral assets have already been sold, and the company is weighing an offer for its tree company. It hopes to float its stake in a Russian electronic publishing venture on the Alternative Investment Market.So what is left? Principally, its 59.2 per cent [...]

“He looks like a horror character, though.”And King does play the part. He once did an American Express advertisement, emerging gaunt from the shadows with a raven on his arm. “He’s a big jovial enthusiastic person,” says Greil Marcus, a music critic who sings with King in a rusty writers’ band. When his local music [...]

These included the jibe that AT&T was about to stand for Allen and Two Temps and the quip whenever something seemed to go awry: “That would never have happened if Bob Allen was still alive.”Then came the unhappy day in January when Mr Allen revealed that in fact he was stripping 40,000 positions from AT&T, [...]