For the best part of a week, each man got treatment that would not have disgraced a film star.

ECONOMIST: The Nobel-prize ceremonies

He thus put together a collection of apparatus that would not have disgraced the set of a mad-scientist horror film, and filled it with a mixture of methane, ammonia, hydrogen and water vapour that matched contemporary ideas of what the primitive terrestrial atmosphere had been composed of.

ECONOMIST: Stanley Miller

And, although he has been unscathed by Italy's political scandals, his association with the disgraced Bettino Craxi may not be forgotten.

ECONOMIST: Europe��s presidential race: the form

Many Pakistanis do not want to see Mr Khan disgraced or else want to see the investigation extended to any senior military figures involved too.

ECONOMIST: Pakistan’s proliferator-in-chief | The

Ecuador countered by releasing what purports to be Reyes's diary, which implicates disgraced former aides of Mr Correa in accepting FARC money but not the president himself. (Colombia reckons the document is fabricated.) Until it gets active co-operation from all its neighbours in fighting the FARC and other drug traffickers, Colombia will conclude that it must rely on American support.

ECONOMIST: Colombia and its neighbours