Cod in Maine: Fish tales
Can farming save Maine's moribund fishing industry?AT 7:30am, Sorrento harbour’s small parking lot is full of pickup trucks and empty of people. The lobstermen are already out hauling in their traps; lobstering is big business in coastal Maine. Thankfully, I am here to meet cod farmers, who don’t keep such rough hours. I am awaiting my contact on a bench overlooking the placid bay between Sorrento and the hazy mountains of Acadia National Park. The tide is low. A diesel engine rattles somewhere out on the water. I am in no hurry for him to arrive.The Victorian homes stretched along Sorrento’s waterfront are shuttered and vacant for most of the year. Like m

Barcelona: The Spanish prisoners
Does failure in Barcelona augur poorly for Copenhagen?THERE is an odd crowd on my late-afternoon flight from London to Barcelona. Peeking at the reading material of my seatmates, I notice that most of us seem to be heading for the UN climate-change talks in Barcelona—the last before a larger gathering in Copenhagen this December. For the last two years, most of the world’s nations have been negotiating a deal that is supposed to reduce carbon emissions and tackle climate change. It is somewhat ironic that the negotiation has involved so much airline travel by so many people. The gentleman next to me, while checking out women on his mobile, is definitely shuffling UN pa

Jörg Haider's museum: Chameleon at rest
Commemorating a populist with shades of truth and memory“OF COURSE I knew Mr Haider personally!” says Mr Berger, taking a break from his singing. He had been accompanying a melancholy Alpine choir at the opening of a museum commemorating Jorg Haider, an Austrian far-right politician who died in a drunken car crash on October 11th 2008.Mr Berger pulls a collection of photos from his jacket pocket to prove his point. They show him in lively conversation with Haider at some kind of party. Mr Berger is not especially famous or politically active, he explains, but in Carinthia, Haider made it his business to know everybody. He had an irrepressible bonhomie, a shrewd

Fenger Academy: First day jitters
A troubled school before the cameras arrivedA FEW weeks after I visited Fenger Academy, on Chicago’s far south side, television cameras swarmed the school. The incident at Fenger was so alarming that the White House dispatched two cabinet secretaries to quell anxiety. I came for happier reasons. The Fenger was still in the heady first days of school, exciting not only because every new year brings new opportunities, but because this year seemed particularly ripe with them.Fenger is closer to Indiana’s belching mills than to downtown Chicago. It has struggled for decades. From 2006 to 2008 less than 3% of students met Illinois’s pathetic standards of achiev

Kyrgyzstan: Tripolar disorder
The new Great Game, from the ground upKYRGYZSTAN is the only country that hosts both American and Russian military bases. Economically, it depends on remittances sent home by workers in Russia, and on its burgeoning trade with China. The country’s rulers are skilled at balancing these three superpowers against each other, but ordinary Kyrgyzstanis feel the push and pull keenly.American influence was visible from the moment I arrived at Manas airport, in Kyrgyzstan’s capital, Bishkek. Kyrgyz returning from abroad lugged huge plastic bags full of goods impossible to obtain at home. Chinese businessmen struggled to fill in their landing forms. Western backpackers w