The UK has signed a breakthrough deal to recover lost tax from Britons holding bank accounts in Liechtenstein.

I'm not a big fan of the Politics of Envy; I tend not to worry about the size of other people's bonuses or the perks that they receive for doing a good job. One area that stretches my otherwise liberal attitudes is the practice of deliberate tax avoidance via offshore tax havens, like Liechtenstein. The fact that HMRC has now done a deal with Liechtenstein, and that avoided tax is to be recovered, seems entirely reasonable and I wish them luck. Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that the tax on £3bn over 10 years is probably around £150m; that isn't going to dig the Government out of its current hole, but it's a decent chunk of money and worth chasing, I think.

The device, known as the Air Launch Running Gear Entanglement System, looks like a futuristic bazooka out of the imagination of a Hollywood prop designer.

When you absolutely positively have to stop every speedboat on the river, accept no substitute - you need this little thing.

GOOGLE HAS TRIED to steal thunder from the Microsoft Yahoo search deal by releasing a sandbox preview of its new search engine.

A strange "story", because it sounds like Google haven't really released anything of any interest. More news tomorrow...

A multi-million dollar project that involves building one of the largest concrete arch bridges in the world, in the shadow of the Hoover Dam will reach a major milestone in the next few weeks.

I've only seen the Hoover Dam from above (a long way above, on a flight from Las Vegas to Chicago) and it was a pretty impressive site. I imagine it would be a whole lot more impressive from the mid-point of the bridge, which itself looks like a serious piece of engineering.

Thanks to its posturing politicians, Britain will soon start to run out of electricity. What should it do?

The depressing thing about the Economist is that they always make their arguments in a calm, logical way, and they don't sugar-coat things. I imagine we'll find a way out of the mess our politicians have dumped us in, but it'll be more expensive that it needs to be, and more difficult. I think it is time to get some new politicians, ones that can make decisions, enact policy and deliver results, but to whom do we turn?

Our only real qualm with the product is that it looks like a Kleenex box from Don Johnson's bathroom in 1986.

I have to admit that, if I had $8,000 to spare, a gold-plated PC wouldn't even feature in my top 1,000 must-have items.