Philobiblon

Europe’s first new mammal to be discovered in 150 years is Mus cypriacus, or if you’re being familiar the Cypriot mouse. Of course people knew that they were there, but not that it was a separate species – a reminder of how little we still know about the natural world, even in the most-studied region of it.

A rather delicious little piece of historical irony – a group of Maori are claiming British pensions (which give the comparative level of the NZ dollar versus sterling would come in very handy).

The claim is based on the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, the document that handed sovereignty over New Zealand to Britain, ruled at the time by Queen Victoria.
Article Three of the treaty guarantees Maori “the same rights and privileges as British subjects.”

You might call it the price of empire.

Then a surprising (if perhaps only temporary – due to share prices) fact out of China – the richest person there, topping the list of billionaires, is a woman.

Ms Zhang, the 49-year-old founder of Nine Dragons Paper, which buys scrap paper from the United States for use in China, shot from 36th to pole position in the annual China Rich List compiled by Hurun Report, the luxury publishing and events group, making her the first woman ever to top the Rich List.
“She is the wealthiest self-made woman in the world,” said Rupert Hoogewerf, a researcher who has been compiling the rich list for seven years. Her fortune trumps that of US chat show queen Oprah Winfrey and the Harry Potter creator J K Rowling. Her wealth was estimated at £202m last year, but the share price of Nine Dragons has tripled since she listed her company on the Hong Kong stock exchange and the market for recycled products is growing at a furious pace.
The previous incumbent, Huang Guangyu of China’s biggest electronics retailer, Gome, has been knocked into second place, with his personal wealth thought to be £1.3bn.