You know how it is with buses? You wait ages for one, far longer than seems reasonable - and then three arrive all at once. Financial crises are a bit like that too.
Having just been on holiday with two very strong-willed little boys aged 8 and 9, I feel particularly well qualified to explain why the two Koreas went to the brink of war over some loudspeakers but didn't go over the edge.
''No-one can set the price of oil. It's up to Allah,'' said Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi in May.
Protesters thronged Brazil's cities last Sunday (local time) demanding the impeachment of Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff, narrowly elected to a second term just last October, but not one of them made any reference to the Peter Principle.
We have been hearing a lot about the 70th anniversary of the first use of a nuclear weapon on human beings, in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.
Reuven Rivlin, the president of Israel, is an outspoken man, but he knows when to hold his fire.
It was not so much a straw in the wind as a cheese in the wind. It's a chewy, salty cheese that is delicious grilled: halloumi, as they call it in the Greek-speaking Republic of Cyprus, or hellim, as it is known in the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus.
Fifty-five years ago Nobosuke Kishi, Japan's prime minister, resigned just after winning the battle to push the treaty revising the country's military alliance with the United States through Parliament.
A few weeks ago, at the height of the panic in the Chinese stock markets, a sour joke was doing the rounds: ''Last month, the dog was eating what I eat. Last week, I was eating what the dog eats. This week, I think I'll eat the dog.''
The thing to bear in mind about this week's deal between Iran and the P5+1 countries (the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China) is that without it Iran could get nuclear weapons in a year or so whenever it wants.
It's game, set and match to the Burmese generals.
In theory, it could still work. It only requires three miracles.
Last Friday, in France, an Islamist named Yahya Salhi killed his employer, Herve Cornara.
Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir, facing an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC) for genocide and war crimes, fled from an African Union summit meeting on Monday before the conference ended.
Mr R. E. Clouston, of Rockville, near Collingwood, Nelson, in a letter to a friend in Christchurch (says the Lyttelton Times) states that he has discovered a very large colony of kakapos, which were reported to be very rare many years ago.
Tomorrow is the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, and in the course of the day you are almost bound to hear or read somebody claiming that it ''changed history''.
For Turks, the burning question after this month's election is whether they will now get the fully democratic, pluralist country that so many of them want.
Just before he sat down to a traditional Bavarian meal of sausages and beer with German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the start of the G7 summit on Monday, US President Barack Obama told the media one of the meeting's priorities would be discussing ways of ''standing up to Russian aggression in Ukraine''.
''The Greek Government would be well advised to act quickly - for the Greek banks, it is five minutes to midnight,'' said Andreas Dombret, an executive board member of the German central bank, last weekend.
''If the United States' bottom line is that China has to halt its activities, then a US-China war is inevitable in the South China Sea,'' said an editorial in the Global Times last week.