Towards end-August, Piero Cipellone, member of the European Central Bank's executive board declared that a situation where price increases persist while an economy registers zero to negligible growth, the so-called stagflation, is still only a remote possibility where Europe is concerned. Actually the inflation rate at present is rather satisfactory. It hasn't exploded as many predicted it would, after the war against Iran did not pan out the way the Americans intended it to go. However, the danger that prices will pick up fast is still with us, given the uncertainties that the wars in the Ukraine and Iran have generated.

Yet the European economy as a whole is hardly giving encouraging signals. In the bigger countries, worries have proliferated about what could really be done to improve matters. Governments discuss the need for restructuring but seem unable to implement it. Misgivings have not abated regarding the state of public finances in the major economies like in France and Italy (not to mention the UK). Crucial sectors of European industry (like the production of cars by Germany) are in crisis. And practically all European governments remain distracted by the problem of how best to face up to the ever-growing (as they see it) political challenge  set by the extreme right.

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SHADOW JURY

Has the practice of running a shadow jury now also reached Malta? The question could have arisen among people who were following what was happening in the Maltese law courts these past two months. There seemed to be hints that something of the sort was being deployed.

A shadow jury is made up of persons who would resemble in character, experience etc. the members of a             real jury in an ongoing important trial. Hired by one side or another on the "real" trial, shadow jurors give their reactions to ongoing court proceedings. In this way, the side which has commissioned them for this task can gauge the effectiveness of its strategy as defence or prosecution and adapt it from day to day.

In the US and elsewhere it seems that this technique has caught on quite widely. The first time it was tried out in a big way was in the trial by jury of O J Simpson. As a method, it's quite similar to the focus group techniques used in politics and in the marketing campaigns  of large corporations.

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THE MALTESE SEA

With his courageous decision to change the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America, Donald Trump has given the example. We'd be weaklings if we do not follow in his footsteps.

We're situated in the exact centre of our Sea. From east to west and from west to east, our strategic position dominates the Sea. Yet over the centuries we allowed others to brazenly attach their name to parts of it, as with the Tyrrenhian, Adriatic, Ionian "seas"... Worst of all, there is the name of Mediterranean, attached to the Sea as a whole, as if Malta did not even exist.

The time has come to undo all this. The Prime Minister should take a leaf out of Mr Trump's book and immediately sign an executive order to change the Sea's name. From the Mediterranean, it should become by rights, the Sea of Malta. The change would need to be entered not merely in maps of the now so-called "Mediterranean", but in all the communications issued by all government and private bodies, Maltese and foreign, whenever they refer to our Sea.