Helen Hickey

NEW YORK, Oct 30 — The walls of our 40th-floor apartment on the Upper East have only just stopped creaking like an old oak tree in a storm, but the pendant lights above our kitchen table continue to sway nauseously before my eyes. It feels like we’ve been on board an ocean liner in rough seas for the past six hours. Hurricane Sandy, the so-called perfect storm given its convergence with two other weather systems, one from the east and an Arctic cold front from the north, mixe

The scores are in following Monday’s third, and last, presidential debate: President Barack Obama is declared the overall winner by two debates to Republican challenger Mitt Romney’s one, according to the Gallup poll results published Thursday. Obama made a belligerent comeback in the Town Hall debate after his lacklustre first, and stampeded over Governor Romney all “bayonets and horses” during Monday’s foreign policy debate to beat Romney by 56% to 33% based on a poll of Am

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney rather annoyingly nailed it last Wednesday. His slick jabs left a stumped Barack Obama licking his presidential wounds and rich post debate pickings from which the tabloids gleefully spat out the headlines: “Romney batters Bam in first debate: DIRECT MITT!”, or better still, “Mitt’s Massacre”. Was President Obama having a bad day? Did swapping a romantic supper á deux with Michelle to mark their 20th wedding anniversary for a debate

The British government declared the Gower peninsula to be Britain’s first Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty back in 1956. Wales, July 28—I rarely rise to comments like: “Who’d want to go to Wales”, a glib remark made by a friend’s daughter on hearing our summer travel plans. She’s not the first sniffy Brit to be boorish about Wales and certain not to be the last. I’d give them a good ‘Croseo i Cymru’ if they were minded to visit: the land of green valleys, sheep, rugby, cast