Dresden / DPA When his royal palace in Dresden was badly damaged by fire in 1701, the Elector of Saxony and King of Poland seized his chance: Out with the original romanesque architecture and in with a glamourous new-fangled style: baroque. Over the next three decades, August II (1670-1733) oversaw a major refurbishing of the Dresden Royal Palace, creating …

  Tokyo / DPA Otochika Ichikawa is a friendly, elderly man, who smiles and is good at making eye-contact as he speaks. The 70-year-old Japanese enjoys conversation. He knows, from bitter experience, how important social contact is. “When my daughter was 14 she refused to go to school,” Ichikawa says. His daughter spent hours leafing through the pages of all …

  Bloomberg The oil industry will shake off the effects of the biggest downturn in a generation this year as they more than double project approvals and increase exploration spending for the first time in three years, according to Wood Mackenzie Ltd. Companies will green-light more than 20 oil and gas fields for development compared with nine in 2016, the …