By MARK LEIBOVICH and GRANT BARRETT

WASHINGTON — Politics without buzzwords is like sports without clichés, math without numbers or Blago without bleeps. Tough to imagine, in other words, especially in such a game-changer of a campaign year in which buzzwords were flying like shoes.

Buzzwords are what political wiseguys use to sound all important and knowing in a profession whose prime currency is the illusion of being both. They are like secret passwords for the chattering class, the verbal equivalent of a terrorist fist jab.

The aurora borealis is a fickle phenomenon. A week can pass without a flicker…then bang! The Northern Lights come on like a celestial lava lamp. In the far north of Sweden, Nigel Tisdall is rewarded for his patience.

By Nigel Tisdall

Happy camper: Watching the aurora south of Abisko, Sweden, claimed to be ‘the best place in the world to see it’ Photo: PETER ROSEN

The Northern Lights have been a source a wonder for many years - this drawing of the phenomenon dates from the 19th century

Sat Sep 20, 2008 2:30am EDT

By Nick Mulvenney

BEIJING (Reuters) - Beijing was grinding back to its congested normal on Saturday after two months of traffic restrictions and factory closures which kept the city’s notorious pollution at bay for the Olympic and Paralympic games.

The Chinese capital is one of the world’s most polluted cities and there has been widespread debate about whether the traffic control measures should be retained.

Although the Olympic regulations do not officially expire until midnight on Saturday, cars with both odd and even number plates were already on the streets of central Beijing by mid-morning.

More than 170 million Chinese schoolchildren tuned into a compulsory two-hour propaganda broadcast designed to fill them with pride over the Olympics and China’s response to the Sichuan earthquake in May.

By Malcolm Moore in Shanghai
Last Updated: 7:50PM BST 01 Sep 2008

Sichuanese orphans celebrate as they enter the National Stadium to watch the Olympics Photo: EPA

On Monday evening, the first day of the new academic year, the Ministry of Education ordered all primary and middle school children to watch The First Lesson of the New Term, a brightly-lit variety show which skillfully weaved together China’s “Olympic spirit” and its fortitude in the face of disaster.

China is planning to build the world’s fastest bullet train, to link Beijing with the financial capital Shanghai.

By Richard Spencer in Beijing
Last Updated: 11:51AM BST 01 Sep 2008

China’s bullet trains will be able to travel at 236 miles an hour by 2012. Photo: REUTERS

In a sign the country’s ambitions to go faster, higher and bigger have not been dimmed by the end of the Olympics, the Ministry of Railways says it is raising the speed it intends the new line connecting the cities to reach when it opens in 2012.