Today, Boris Johnson's New York counterpart, Michael Bloomberg, is coming to town. The pair will exchange tips about the challenges of running effectively the two most important cities on Earth, and they'll be chinwagging about the pros and cons of their relative roles. According to the Beeb, Boris will be envious of the hefty £30bn budget his doppelgänger controls, while Bloomberg will eye the meager legislative red tape that allows schemes like the congestion......

Well, not all of them, obviously. But the London launch of a US newspaper heavyweight, and a high-profile fundraiser for a Presidential candidate, has given us threadbare cause to run that rather glib headline. Moving on.... For London's business and financial elite, the pink pages of the Financial Times are the only thing to be seen reading on the morning commute to work. However, the FT's sturdy grip on matters monetary will be challenged......

Hang on to your TLSs. Literary London is a lioness roaring in a few weeks ahead of her regularly scheduled appearance in March. With both the London Word Festival and Jewish Book Week launching this week, we’ve got enough events in our diary to keep us busy until spring. Keep an eye on this space as we highlight our favourites from these festivals over the next couple of weeks. Monday: You want poetry? RADA’s......

As the repercussions continue around the Premiership's shock announcement that it was going to take its brand of football around the world in a weekend, its chief executive Richard Scudamore is determined that the plan should survive in some way, shape or form. As we mentioned last week, FIFA's regional associations and its president Sepp Blatter himself have come out in opposition to the idea of our league matches encroaching on their territories at......

If you were inspired by yesterday's interview with competitor Olivia Brown, you might want to go along to this weekend's Winter Swimming Championship at the Tooting Bec Lido, the largest fresh water swimming pool in Europe, to find out more about the joys of an outdoor dip. The festivities start today with registration, practice and media activities. The competition proper opens on Saturday at 9:10 am with the first of 95 heats of 25-metre......

If you were wandering around Bayswater last night and wondering why you were surrounded by several thousand Americans, it's not because we started granting political asylum to those seeking refuge from the Bush regime (a bit late for that, really). No, it's because last night, Democrats Abroad held their very own Super Tuesday event for expatriates who wanted something more tangible than pointing and clicking for their favourite candidate. Obama advocates and Hillary supporters......

From time to time we give one of our writers the opportunity to offer a very personal view of a subject that's weighing on their minds. This time it's the turn of Julie, who's been spurred into print by the hoopla surrounding tonight's big NFL showpiece and the return of the league to our city later this year. Happy Superbowl Sunday, London NFL fans! Things have been looking up for you lately, eh? You......

London's Latin American community will descend on Trafalgar Square this Monday. As part of a protest that is stretching from Bogotá to cities across the world, they will be marching on the Great World Rally Against FARC. FARC, or the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, is a guerrilla Marxist group that has fought the Colombian government for over four decades, the longest insurgency in Latin America. Listed by the United States and the EU......

Having treated audiences at the May 2007 All Tomorrow's Parties' "ATP vs. The Fans" festival to her gentle brand of Northern Californian folk, Mariee Sioux returns to the UK this week to play a series of London gigs. A childhood friend of Rough Trade favourite Alela Diane, Sioux also grew up in the mountainous, artist-friendly town of Nevada City, a landscape which can be heard speaking through both singer's works. With a languid step......

The next time you're stuck in a black cab ensnarled in traffic on the North Circular, the rain sluicing through the cracked window onto your chinos, and the cabbie turns to you with a wry grin and cracks a line about how great the weather is in San Diego this time of year, be wary: this effusive endorsement of all things Americana may not be as innocent as it seems. US outfit Taxi Promotions......

Defying Doctor Johnson's epithet that a man tired of London is tired of life, Rupert Murdoch recently decamped to America and his latest plaything, the Wall Street Journal, declaring himself finished with our city. So what then of the building that encapsulates all he wrought on Britain's newspaper industry in the Eighties? "Fortress Wapping", the monolithic News International HQ in E1W so soubriqueted because of the heavy police guard it fielded against striking workers......

It's been a bad few weeks for the Spice Girls: they released the worst selling Children In Need single ever (to put this into perspective, let's remember that Martine McCutcheon once had a Children In Need single. Martine McCutcheon), appeared in terrible Tesco adverts, played to half full shows in America and Baby Spice sprained her little baby ankle on stage. However, little Emma Bunton ingested her weight in painkillers, soldiered on and appeared......

Ahoy hoy, book grocery shoppers! The metaphorical book grocer aisles are stocked high with choice meats and sweet confections this December, so whatever your tastes, fill up your shopping cart and gorge yourself on this week’s selection of literary events – they’ll give you much less of a stomach-ache than mince pies. Monday: Revisit Sylvia Plath by attending the aptly named Sylvia Plath Revisited, at the ICA (7pm in the Nash Room £10 nonmembers/£9......

After an extended holiday, Saturday Cinema Summary is back, courtesy of James Bryan... This week Ridley Scott makes a bid to join the hallowed greats of gangster films with American Gangster, the naked pixelated form of Angelina Jolie drips in gold in Beowulf and Brick Lane gets the film treatment. American Gangster seems to have all the ingredients of an instant classic, even the title smacks of definitive greatness. Throw in the setting of......

South London is conspicuously not in the heart of modern London theatre land (although we have got the Globe – nah-nah-na-nah-nah). But we do have a good few worthy theatres (as well as the Globe). And one of the best-loved and well-used is the Oval House Theatre in Kennington. There’s all sorts of good stuff on there, but this Londonista is very pleased that ‘The Persian Revolution’ is putting an appearance there on its......

We warned you that Dolphins and Giants from America are soon to arrive on our shores. The players are no doubt taking utmost care in preparing for their arrival tomorrow morning. One player might have over-prepared but for completely the wrong country, so keep an eye out for the anxious guy with a puzzled-looking translator under one arm. If Channing Crowder, the Miami Dolphins linebacker approaches you this weekend, speak loudly, slowly and clearly......

Hot on the heels of basketball and ice hockey, the third of America's big four sports has begun its landing on our shores. The advance guard for Sunday's NFL encounter between the Miami Dolphins and the New York Giants consists of just one man. Albeit a very big one. Pictured above is the specially commissioned twenty-six foot high animatronic statue of Dolphins defensive end Jason Taylor which is touring London and the South East......

It's time to stand up, speak out and come together for Feminist Fightback, the annual free activist conference taking place at University of East London for it's second year. Because fighting back is still necessary and feminism is not dead - and sadly, women's rights and gender equality still need protecting and promoting. Representatives from groups like Central American Women's Network, Women in Darfur, Women's Environment Network, Southall Black Sisters, MPs, student union representatives......

The breathlessly international Bicycle Film Festival is seven years old this year and it is rolling into London with a string of cool films and even cooler parties and exhibitions, from Wednesday 17 October to Sunday 21 October. Films about two-wheel transport range from modern-day radicalism in Canada to gruelling fundraising cycle hikes over the Alps, from the factory floor in America to changing lives in Ghana, a helmet-camera tour of several international cities......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 20. Kids Today I discovered this conversation on Fridaycities – the London social network site (if you want to join it you might need this code: pfpxc3ogqu5). They were discussing why people think that so many kids are stabbing each other. A few different points were made about this, one being that knife crime and......

It's entirely in the nature of ducks that they can fly under the radar, but only in fairy tales do kings arrive unannounced. Nevertheless, even those who would count themselves fans of ice hockey may be surprised to learn that the O2 Arena this weekend hosts not just one, but two clashes between a pair of North American professional teams. And not just a pre-season slapabout, mind you. These are the opening fixtures of......

Fresh Next Week: Born in 1949 in what is now Croatia, Dubravka Ugrešić made a controversial figure with her trenchant opposition to nationalism, both Serbian and Croatian. Her latest book Nobody’s Home tours Europe and America, finding that as the former Eastern bloc has thrown itself whole-heartedly into Western-style modernisation, the West itself is, ironically, beginning to take on some of the characteristics of the old Soviet state. Thursday 4 October, 7pm, The London......

As befits a truly global capital, London has established itself as a hub in the important international trade of tourist-attracting human reproductions, importing Chinese warriors and exporting waxwork celebrities. While the first crowds were taking a gander at 20 members of the Emperor Ying’s terracotta court at the British Museum, 51 waxworks produced by Madame Tussauds arrived in Washington DC, naked and apparently ready to party. The likes of Beyonce, George Clooney, Tom Cruise......

Sting and Co bring The Police to Wembley Arena on Saturday 20th October to finish off their European tour before jetting off to North America. Tickets go on sale at 9am tomorrow, but expect them to go quickly. Madness plays the O2 on Friday 14th November as part of a quick UK arena tour. Tickets are on sale at 9am tomorrow morning. Kanye West brings his “Glow in the Dark Tour” to London in......

In the UK, Joe Rogan is probably best known for playing Joe Garrelli in the sitcom NewsRadio, as a presenter on the American reality show Fear Factor, and as a commentator for the Ultimate Fighting Championship. What us Londoners may not be aware of is that Joe is also a prolific stand-up comedian, gigging regularly to huge audiences around America for over fifteen years. He mixes traditional stand-up with political satire, a dissection of......

It looks like summer might actually have arrived in London this week, but if you're determined to stay inside, here are a few things to help you bide the time. On TV, Londonist likes: Monday, 3 September – Wednesday, 5 September Dumped (Channel 4, 21:00-22:00) We’ve already told you about this interesting concept involving contestants living on a rubbish dump, and since you’re no doubt looking to fill the Big Brother void in your......

Kate Monro is working on a book about that most intimate subject: how people lose their virginity. She's interviewed Londoners old and young, male and female, gay, straight, Muslim and Roman Catholic, able and non-able bodied. And she's always on the lookout for, ahem, a new angle... Why are you so curious about how people lost their virginity? I’m nosy! No, seriously, it came to me in a light bulb moment. A friend and......

The Treatment Rooms is a privately owned three-story house in the West London suburb of Chiswick, which over the past several years has had its exterior walls transformed into an ongoing self-contained conceptual piece of mosaic art. The vibrant and well executed mosaics, which cover the front wall of the house and the back garden wall are well worth paying a visit to see. Recently, Londonist took an opportunity to visit the Treatment Rooms......

Lily Allen’s bouncy song "Smile" has obviously had no effect on the meanest people on the planet: US Immigration Officials. The pop star, aged 22, was detained at Los Angeles International Airport for five hours while questioned about the caution she received in June for an alleged assault she committed in London. The bad news is that her work visa was revoked. The good news is that she was not strip searched, nor did......

It really does seem like the Osbournes are taking over the world, doesn't it? You can't turn on the telly without seeing Sharon on The X-Factor and America's Got Talent, Kelly on Project Catwalk or Jack on one of those extreme sports adrenaline addict shows he seems to be so fond of. Kelly's released three albums and starred in the US teen drama Life As We Know It. Jack's written an autobiography of his......