Earlier this month LVMH, a Parisian luxury-goods giant, made off with Bulgari, a Roman jeweller; and French firms have recently had an Italian insurer and power company in their sights.
The latest was a panel from the National Academy of Sciences, enlisted by the White House, to tell us that the Earth's atmosphere is definitely warming and that the problem is largely man-made.
More than half of all recent graduates are unemployed or in jobs that do not require a degree, and the amount of student-loan debt carried by households has increased more than five times since 1999.
There is evidence that firms believe they are behaving rationally whenever they downsize; yet recent research has shown that the actual economic effects of downsizing are often negative for firms.
Bracken fern has been spreading from its woodland strongholds for centuries, but the rate of encroachment into open countryside has lately increased alarmingly throughout northern and western Britain.
A recent study with teenage male songbirds finds that they can suddenly have a surge of tweeting talent when they are placed in the presence of a female bird. Christie Nicholson reports.
Inheritors of some of the viewpoints of early twentieth-century Progressive historians such as Beard and Becker, these recent historians have put forward arguments that deserve evaluation.