World Reaction

Jaguar has announced its most powerful and fastest production car yet, the XKR-S. Capable of breaking the symbolic 300km/h (186mph) barrier, the new model is also capable of reaching 60mph from rest in 4.2 seconds. Its supercharged V8 engine produces 550 horsepower and 680 Newton metres of torque. A special exhaust system “rewards the enthusiastic driver with dramatic, motorsport-inspired aural feedback”. Uprated suspension, wheels and steering are fitted and there are aerodynamic modifications to help maintain stability at speed.

Ford's small B-Max MPV is wowing visitors to the Geneva Motor Show with two big innovations that are bound to worry competitors with less adventurous designs.

Motor racing legend Sir Jackie Stewart was taken to hospital today after falling ill while flying home from the Geneva Motor Show.

Japanese army doctor Shiro Ishii ran the notorious Unit 731 and was responsible for gruesome human experiments designed to develop Japan's germ warfare systems. Like his Nazi counterpart, Josef Mengele, Ishii never faced justice. He escaped prosecution after the war because the United States offered immunity in return for information on the programmes on humans that they were unable to carry out themselves. He was allowed to continue his medical research in Japan after the war and died of natural causes in 1959, aged 67.

Luxury carmaker Rolls-Royce, part of the BMW Group, has confirmed the development of 102EX, a one-off, fully electric-powered version of its Phantom limousine which will debut at the Geneva Motor Show next week.

Future Einsteins of the world, Google needs you. The California internet giant already has a reputation for progressive employment policies with its bean-bag culture, lava-lamp filled offices and insistence that engineers spend 20 per cent of their year working on something that interests them personally.

A spy named Henry Phillips betrayed one of the greatest of all English writers – the only one, perhaps, whose phrases by the dozen still fill the mouths of many millions of English speakers every day. Charged with heresy and treason, Phillips's victim was picked up in Antwerp and imprisoned outside Brussels. His detention came, a deal between monarchs, as a result of the sort of inter-state solidarity against alleged subversives that now gives us the European Arrest Warrant. After months in his fortress jail, he went on trial and received the inevitable death sentence. He was strangled at the stake with an iron chain. Then his corpse was burnt. According to legend, the translator and reformer William Tyndale ended his life in September 1536 with the words: "Lord, open the king of England's eyes."

Age: 65

Age: 17

Age: 21

The pain was bad enough – I'd broken my back in a fall while skiing off-piste – but it could have lasted much longer. The helicopter rescue didn't come cheap. Nor did the morphine, the Swiss hospital, the six seats converted as a stretcher on the flight from Geneva, or the fee for the doctor sent to bring me home.