After the shock and awe tactics of the Rabaa massacre last summer, when Egypt’s military regime murdered around a thousand supporters of the deposed president, Mohamed Morsi, the rolling...
There’s plenty of evidence in Thanet to support Ukip’s general proposition that local power is being diminished while the power of remote, faceless authorities is growing.
As we stepped off the ferry onto the Aegean island of Symi in late August, our thoughts were on sunbathing and sailing. But the first thing we saw was a group of what we soon discovered were...
Many American Jews dislike the suggestion that there is any tension between their commitment to liberalism and their Zionism.
Polling day, which we’d waited for in a fervour, was odd and quiet. Mist pressed at the windows. I felt convalescent and washed out, and fair enough, for the last ten days I’d...
It was said that al-Qaida must not be allowed to hold territory in Syria, but both an al-Qaida affiliate and Isis have been doing just that, and it wasn’t until earlier this month that Obama announced...
America has now officially embarked on a long war in the Middle East, a war so taxing that officials judge it ill-advised to predict a termination in fifteen years or fifty. If one regards the...
Valérie Trierweiler’s book about her life as a grande Hollandaise and France’s first lady, and then – abruptly – neither of those, is more hair-raising than the...
Mostly he remained inconceivably calm. Even now, with the clock winding down on his freedom, Snowden still went to bed at 10.30, as he had every night during my time in Hong Kong. While I could...
The story of Dr Zhivago’s publication is, like the novel itself, a cat’s cradle, an eternal zigzag of plotlines, coincidences, inconsistencies and maddening disappearances.
Under joint enterprise there is no need to prove that you intended to commit the crime, and you don’t have to be the person who plunged the knife or pulled the trigger. You can be convicted on what’s...
As part of their training, American soldiers are taught not to be afraid of tear gas (or lachrymatory agent, as it’s formally known). A friend of a friend of mine was stationed in the...
In Donetsk I had expected to find a totalitarian proto-state, and I did.
The latest assault on Gaza has given fresh impetus to calls to bring Israel to account at the International Criminal Court. Since the UN General Assembly recognised the state of Palestine in...
In the world of money, there is always an Official Worry List, containing the next big things which are likely to go wrong or blow up. The items on the list are sometimes problems we’ve...
Lasers are the latest tool for high-frequency trading.
Scotland has long been a nation. We shall soon find out whether its citizens now wish that nation to become a state. I hope they do. It will not only open up new opportunities for their own...
At the village of Khanqe, in Iraqi Kurdistan, tens of thousands of Yazidi refugees were living in rows of UN-issued tents. They had been driven out of their homes in Sinjar, sixty miles to the...