Weather for Freiberg, Germany -11°C | °F Mon Tue Wed Thu Clear Wind: E at 11 km/h Humidity: 38% -11° -20° -11° -15° -7° -20° -2° -17° Amazingly, I’ve decided not to walk 5 km along the road to go and look a second hand cars today.

This weekend, thousands of people defied the cold and the control in Moscow to show their dislike for Vladimir Putin and what Russia has become under his leadership: corrupt, energy-reliant, centralised, and uncompetitive. It is now a country that must win externally because it can't help but lose internally. ‘Post-BRIC’, as a new report has it. My guess is that Putin will ‘...

I'm back! With a filthy cold, but newly cleansed ears, having had a doctor with a little machine suck out great gobbets of Beijing ear-shit yesterday. The world is a surprisingly noisy place. Should any of you have missed me...

How many times have you been told “it won’t snow, it’s too cold”?  Hundreds I expect but has it ever occurred to you how it manages to snow in Antarctica where the temperature never goes above freezing point, even at the coast? There is only one temperature where it is too cold to snow and

William Hague accused the Syrian regime of "cold-blooded cynicism" as reports of one of the bloodiest attacks of the uprising which is reported to have left 200 people dead fuelled calls for United Nations action.

Yesterday Antoine and I visited the Pompidou Centre. Follow the link above for the usual Pompidou Centre pictures. Here's a less usual picture of the thing, in the form of a picture of a model of it that we encountered inside: I was glad to visit this building, if only to go somewhere out of the cold, which has been extreme (and made much worse by the wind) but which may now be abating a...

Group urges US and Russia to relocate a proportion of their arms deployed in Europe, which hark back to cold war-era hostilities

At the Conservative Conference that was held following the formation of the Coalition government there were many, often negative, views from delegates about the need to be in government with the Liberal Democrats. By contrast, Tory ministers, enjoying government for the first time after a long spell in the political cold, were almost falling over themselves to commend their Lib Dem partners as eff...

I am in Paris, staying with occasional Samizdatista Antoine Clarke. Photoed out of the Eurostar on the way, the M25 bridge over the Thames: When I got there and after I'd settled in, we went out for supper and then went walking for a while. Arc de Triomphe: Old internal customs duties office, which ceased functioning in 1943: Antoine on Twitter this morning: Ice cold in Paris …...

Russian gas export monopoly Gazprom has restricted supplies to Europe, its largest foreign market, to cover an increase in domestic demand caused by a cold snap.  More »