Image of the week: Fifa’s “good” times
Looking much like a goalie preparing for a penalty shoot-out, Fifa director of communications Walter De Gregorio hosted a press conference on Wednesday just hours after a number of football officials were arrested and detained in Zurich pending extradition to the US, where authorities suspect them of having received bribes amounting to millions of dollars.
“This for Fifa is good,” De Gregorio told reporters. “It’s not good in terms of image, it’s not good in terms of reputation, but in terms of cleaning up, everything we did in the last four years, this is good.”
He also claimed Fifa president Sepp Blatter was "relaxed", later clarifying that while he was not personally worried about possibilities such as criminal charges and arrests, neither was he "dancing in his office". So that's all good.
In numbers: Hillary’s merch
$30 Price of the "Trailblazer Tee" in Hillary Clinton's merchandise store. It comes adorned with the presidential candidate's 1995 line: "Women's rights are human rights".
$25 Cost of a "Future Voter Onesie" for toddlers too young to vote but not too young for parents to use as a billboard for their voting intentions. Like all the products in the store, it's an "everyday item" made by "everyday Americans".
$55 Price of a cushion delightfully stitched with the words "A woman's place is in the White House". The item is described as "the perfect touch for any home, whether it's 1600 Pennsylvania Ave or simply Pennsylvania".
The Lexicon: Mega-drought
A mega-drought is not your average hosepipe ban-style summer drought. It's a prolonged affair that drags on for two decades or more. California is currently a fifth of the way there, with its four years of drought the longest on record. There is no good news here. Farmers are selling off herds, growers are leaving fields fallow and cities have imposed rationing. And while there was an attempt to blame the Californian crisis on almond producers, on the grounds that cultivating the nuts uses a lot of water, the problem clearly runs deeper than the world's insatiable demand for almond milk. Earlier this year, Nasa predicted that 21st century droughts across the US would make previous mega-droughts "seem like quaint walks through the garden of Eden".
Getting to know: Liu Dejian
Liu Dejian is the 43-year-old founder of the Chinese online games developer NetDragon Websoft, a board member at internet behemoth Baidu and – like a great many tech millionaires – a Star Trek fan. Indeed, he's such a fan he's spent almost $100 million on building headquarters for his company that resemble the USS Enterprise, the Wall Street Journal reports. And if you're thinking "that's a lot of money to make a company boardroom look like Captain Kirk's bridge", then be aware that the entire exterior design of the six-floor, 260m by 100m building mimics that of a Sovereign-class starship – so much so that permission was sought from the Star Trek rights holders before the four-year construction project began. It's business, Jim, but not as we know it.
