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MOST business travellers rely on good internet connections. That's why they buy wireless modems, stay at hotels offering free wireless internet, and want Wi-Fi access on trains and planes. But so far, in-flight wireless has been slow, unreliable and unpopular. Train wireless is often even worse. Now a new study (pdf) from RouteHappy, a flight-search site, has found that just 38% of flights within the US offer Wi-Fi; those flights account for just 44% of aggregate domestic flight time.

Delta, Southwest, and US Airways have the most flights with Wi-Fi, according to the report. But that doesn't mean they're necessarily the best airlines for internet service.

Ed Miliband and Stefan Löfven

This Friday the Commons will vote on the Conservative private members bill legislating for an in-out referendum on Britain’s EU membership before the end of 2017. It will almost certainly be defeated by Labour and Liberal Democrat opposition. All the same, some Labour figures want the party to offer the public a vote on Europe. This, combined with the austerity and deregulatory reforms championed by Angela Merkel and other centre-right EU leaders, might call the party’s traditional enthusiasm for the union into question.

The economy of the European Union's newest member has a familiar feel

WITH only modest fanfare Croatia became the 28th member of the European Union on July 1st. It is the second Balkan state to join the group, after Slovenia in 2004, and its economy has much in common with the mainly Mediterranean "GIIPS" group of countries (Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain). The unemployment rate is high at 17% and the youth jobless rate stands at 52%. Since 2008 the economy has shrunk 13%, though it is expected to grow by 1% this year. Croatia's 4.4m people are poorer than most Europeans, with GDP per person at less than two-thirds the average.

LEONARD SUSSKIND is a professor of theoretical physics at Stanford University and director of the Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics. He is regarded as one of the fathers of string theory, a somewhat controversial attempt to explain physics using a single mathematical framework.

He is the author of several popular-science books about matters cosmological. His new book, “The Theoretical Minimum”, co-written with George Hrabovsky, an amateur physicist, is a primer for readers who want to know how to think like a physicist.

Can you outline what we know about string theory?