The rules surrounding advertising for the tobacco industry have changed drastically in recent years. In years gone by, cigarettes were advertised as promoting good health and as the doorway to a glamorous lifestyle. All that has changed. Governments now require cigarette companies to put health warnings on their packages.

The autumn of 2018 will be remembered as an autumn of great storms – Hurricane Florence, Hurricane Michael, to name just a few. Long after the clean-up of these storms, stories have endured about near misses and heroic rescues.

Do you ever feel a little hard up? Most of us end up feeling at some time like we could do with a little bit more—a bigger house, a newer car, etc. That feeling is not only confined to material things. Some will have a profound sense of missing out in other ways.

Have you ever had the chance to observe a skyscraper as it is being built? There are, of course, different ways in which those great buildings are put together. But, generally speaking, a big skyscraper has at its core a concrete structure – surrounded by a much wider steel frame which contains most of the habitable area of the building.

In the aftermath of a worldwide pandemic, and with images of war flashing across television screens, the world has plenty of despair to go around and not a lot of hope to spare. Life is pretty tough for many people, much of the time – and then eventually all humans die.