a party-coloured flower

The only way in which she could contain her despairing and murderous rage was to lash herself to the mast of her towering superego.

Where the Czech upstart [Lukáš] Rosol, ranked 100 in the world, all but blew [Rafael] Nadal's head off with his blunderbuss in a fifth set of unrivalled intensity on Thursday night, [Julien] Benneteau, a more artful citizen, used a rapier to hurt his vaunted foe before falling just short of a kill. In the end, it was he who staggered from the scene of the fight.

Russia signalled on Monday it would backstop the European Union's bailout of Cyprus despite anger that the weekend rescue deal would impose heavy losses on uninsured depositors, many of them Russian.