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Britain's Keely Hodgkinson, 800 metres gold medalist at Paris, talks about the pressure building up, her experience after an injury, the slump and her recovery in 2025. After a difficult period and an injury while going to London for her MBE, she says she is chilling, and has gained something from the experience to let go off the pressure and just be herself.

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Merck's decision to organize R&D using four innovation hubs in Boston, San Francisco, London and Shanghai. Merck currently lacks a large R&D presence in London and it has commercial operations in Shanghai. Experts say innovation centers enable drug companies to take advantage of academic research at an early stage. Pfizer and other companies are also pursuing a similiar strategy. The new head of R&D at Merck, Dr, Perlmutter plans to shrink staff and focus on promising areas such as immunoterapies for treating cancer and vaccines. Perlmutter comes from Amgen and is bringing people who he worked with at Amgen. The focus is also shifting to tapping the new science behind dieseases.

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Eleanor Morgan describes her work giving vaccination jabs at a mass vaccination centre in North London. She had experience as an assistant psychologist and signed up for training to join the historic vaccination drive of the NHS in Britain.

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Keir Starmer leads the summit of European leaders in London on March 2, 2025. This effort comes after a controversial breakdown in communication between DJT, vice president Vance with Zelensky in the Oval Office at the White House.

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As the European leaders Starmer, Macron, Merz gather together, huddle together at meetings in London, Paris and Brussels, as the US under DJT and Rubio disengage from NATO and perceived expansion, Ariane Chemin gives this report and video in Le Monde on the situation in classrooms, around Square in the centrer of Kviv, at destroyed power plants, and at destroyed buildings in Kviv. Russian drone attacks on Kviv are leaving residents without electricity and without sleep. This is also what Europeans in France and Germany, and Britain, are seeing on news, video and on television.  The last peace initiative stalled after the hopes raised from the Alaska meeting of Putin and the US president. Efforts to get the Russians on board with US envoys in Moscow fail when the European leaders are absent in the talks, and when Russia insists on the 20% of the Donbass and eastern regions it does not control, and limits on Ukraine defense. Ukraine modifies the proposals and Russia insists on territorial concessions. A report in Germany's DW.com from Ukraine calls this "absurd." A new element emerges in this conflict in December 2025 when one sees this in the context of European history where such struggles between European powers happened repeatedly since 1500, with some of them in the period after 1700 involving Russia, Sweden, Denmark, Britain, France, Spain, Prussia and rest of Germany split into many states. That pattern has relevance today because when one power whether France, Austria-Hungary or Russia became dominant the other European powers acted together to keep the balance in Europe.  ...

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Asylum hotel protests and illegal migrants in Britain filing for asylum at 111,000 cases in first 6 months costing $5.4 billion in first half 2025 alone. The Times of London says Starmer is cautious by nature, but strong action is needed going back to the source of the problem that illegal migrants do not belong in any European nation including Britain. The stark truth says Cowley in the Times of London is that having a battalion of British infantry on the coastline of France as it was during the Paris Olympics in France, is needed to keep the boats out of Britain with Britain moving out of the European Convention of Human Rights. That convention was not intended for this situation, just as the British system of justice was not intended for this situation for the people of other countries on other continents illegally migrating over oceans. Just as much as there is no Asian Convention of Human Rights for Europeans migrating over oceans to China, Japan or South Korea now industrialized nations with high standards of living and social protections for health care. ...

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The 32 billion pound bid by the Hong Kong Exchange for the London Stock Exchange is not likely to be viewed favorably by regulators. There is already a bid for the London Stock Exchange that is being reviewed. As The Times puts it "it provides a stern test of the British government's appetite for foreign acquisition of strategic assets."

The London Stock Exchange is making an all share offer for Refinitiv, with the strategy to build a financial data business. That would make Blackstone and Thomson Reuters major shareholders.  The Hong Kong government owns 6% of the Hong Kong Exchange. 

The London Stock Exchange has a long history and is a strategic asset for Britain so that the Hong Kong bid is seen as a bit strange considering that the strategy is different for Refinitiv.

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A son of a Pakistani immigrant who came to England in the 1960's and was a bus driver, is elected Mayor of London in May 2016. Sadiq Khan founded a human rights law firm in London.

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Queen Elizabeth's virtual visit to Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel after the completion of a 155 bed unit in 5 weeks instead of 5 months.Queen Elizabeth hailed the Dunkirk spirit of the construction workers and said "Thank goodness, it still exists."

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The British Library in London is one of the great libraries of the world in an awesome new setting that as Siddharth Pandey says in The Hindu, casts a spell on one's senses and imagination. Its wonderful architecture reflects a modernist sensibility and Scandinavian aesthetics.

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A decade of austerity under the Tories has made everything harder for leveling  up to happen between the south and north of England, says this analysis in The Guardian. Huge gaps in health, education, transport, and wages. Grimsby wages are 60% lower than London's.

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Mayor Johnson on the city, its new buses, and how he got introduced to politics in the city of Wolverhampton, England. He prefers the hop-on, hop-off, classic London buses, that use British technology which he reintroduced. His point about how he got started in politics is an eye-opener- the time time as a reporter in Wolverhampton, when he got fed up with the stuff about the damp and mold and needing ventilation in people's homes, which Labor politicians made it appear that it was the state's responsibility, making people dependent just for the votes.

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Lonely Planet and other travel books contributed to all the travel overcrowding we see today. Tony Wheeler a co-founder has some advice- "go two streets over" and you can avoid a touristy spot for other attractive options. The Washington Post's Andrea Sachs talks to Lonely Planet travel books cofounder Tony Wheeler who started the company with his wife Maureen in 1972 after trips from London to Turkey and Iran by car. Their first book was Across Asia on the Cheap and started a new period of travel using hostels and cheaper accomodations and distant locations not travelled before by earlier generations such as Brazil and Argentina, distant parts of Asia and Africa. Wheeler is now 76 and lives in Melbourne and London. He sold his company in 2011, and it is now run by Red Ventures.

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Berliners were leaving for smaller towns nearby even before the pandemic. This trend will accelerate. The situation is like that of Paris, New York, London and other cities.

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Emma Tucker Editor of The Times will take over as Editor of The Wall Street Journal from Matt Murray. Emma Tucker started at The Financial Times before moving on to the Times of London as deputy editor, and Editor of the Sunday Times.

Ms. Tucker led The Times of London from 2020 leading to digital subscriptions increasing from 320,000 to 450,000 by Sept 2022. Matt Murray joined the Dow Jones at its Pittsburgh bureau in 1994, before serving as executive editor and deputy editor in chief. He started the audio podcasts, and a series on Facebook's negative effects on young women and TikTok's algorithm can introduce adult content to minors. He took the digital subscriptions from 1.59 million to 3.16 million as Editor of WSJ. Murray's strategy was for the WSJ to remain focused on its core strengths in business, finance and economics even as it pursued general interest readers by simplifying the reading.

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Cities including London, New York, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Melbourne, Milan, Caracas, Cape Town, Copenhagen, Vancouver, have pledged to become carbon neutral by 2050.

Reducing transport emissions is a big challenge. London has Ultra low Emission Zone which encourages people to switch to low emission vehicles.  Paris is creating 650 kilometres of cycling paths and plans to open up the whole city to bicycles by 2026. Buildings have a large carbon footprint - producing 38% of global carbon emissions. Of this 11% are in the construction materials of steel and concrete, Wood is an alternative material that is being tried in buildings. Passive heating is a way to heat or cool buildings by building underground canals around a building and using the natural temperatures of the earth to cool or heat the air above. This is seen in the Energon building in Ulm, Germany.

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Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, says "the integrity of the City matters to the economy of Britain," as he takes strong action to safeguard financial benchmark rates set in the City of London. Following the manipulation of LIBOR for which banks paid heavy fines this is a major issue. New legislation will make it a criminal offense, punishable with 7 years in prison. Manipulation will be determined based on the intentions of traders to place trades or share information so that their interests are served above a client's interest. Not just LIBOR, other benchmarks such as London foreign exchange benchmark rate, key gold and silver rate, ICE Brent index and Sterling Overnight Index Average (Sonia), ISADFix, are also included in this legislation.

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Gill Siraj in Test Series against England in June-July 2025. Gill's batting record next only to Don Bradman's legendary batting record. The resilience of the Indian team was tested throughout the five Test matches losing at Headingley to come back with a 336 run win at Edgbaston, losing at Lord's by 22 runs to comeback to win at the Oval in London by 7 runs.

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Starting in May 2023 one could catch a Eurostar sleeper train from London's Kings Cross St Pancras to Berlin with a change in Brussels for 109 euros. This gets you into Berlin for breakfast after a nights sleep on the sleeper train. The service will extend to Dresden and Prague by Dec 2023.

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The way people in England have responded to England's win over Norway 8-0 and Sweden 4-0 is transforming English women's soccer and women's soccer around the world. England is now headed to the final with Germany at Wembley stadium in London with a worldwide audience of soccer fans.

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There is a rich-poor education gap, a 19 month education gap for 11, 15, 17 year olds in England, except for London- according to the Education Policy think tank. Another of the challenges facing Labour's new government. The gap is larger for low income families eligible for school meals- about 2 years.