Photo by Winston Chen on Unsplash Following his invention of the Rocket, in 1829 Robert Stephenson inaugurated the first inter-city railway in the world: connecting Liverpool and Manchester in the country’s northern manufacturing heartland was an obvious priority. Since then other countries have leapt into the future with high speed trains, while the UK struggles with one of…
Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash Exactly 100 years ago, university students across Germany burnt over 25,000 books which the Nazi regime considered ‘degenerate’. Joseph Goebbels, aptly-titled Minister for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda, harangued the crowd at the Opernplatz in Berlin saying: “No to decadence and moral corruption: Yes to decency and morality in family and state!” The…
Photo by forzaalisherka on Unsplash Preparations for the Majilis and Maslikhat elections, which will be held on 19 March, are under way in Kazakhstan. These represent an important step forward in the political modernisation of the country. More than 12 out of the 19 million population of Kazakhstan are included in the voter lists for the elections to…
Photo by Matt Brown on Unsplash In recent weeks the British Government has been deluged with noise about the Northern Ireland Protocol, agreed with the EU following the UK’s departure, well before the text of any new agreement was revealed, writes Philip Bushill-Matthews. None of the noise came from European Commission Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič, who remained diplomatically silent about the…
Photo by Justin Campbell on Unsplash A new poll suggests that Russia’s war on Ukraine has consolidated Western opinions. But the study also reveals a wide gap between the West and the ‘rest’ when it comes to their desired outcomes for the war and differing understandings of why the US and Europe support Ukraine. It says that, in…
Photo by Egor Lyfar on Unsplash Today marks the anniversary of Russia’s genocidal invasion of Ukraine. Russia’s aggression against Ukraine began in 2014 with the seizure of Crimea and the outbreak of hostilities in Donbas. Before the full-scale invasion last year, Ukraine tried to stop the fighting in Donbas and restore its sovereignty peacefully. Volodymyr Zelenskyy won the…
Photo by British Library on Unsplash The Parable of the Old Man and the Young So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,And took the fire with him, and a knife.And as they sojourned both of them together,Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,Behold the preparations, fire and iron,But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?Then Abram…
African film’s premier event starts this Saturday 25th February, in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Fasso. The Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO) was first launched in 1969 and has since evolved into an internationally recognised and respected event. This year will mark the 28th Festival in the series since its inception. The…
This morning Monday 20 February, U.S. President Joe Biden arrived in Kyiv without any announcements or warnings. In the morning, several important highways were blocked in the capital, and the city was gridlocked for a couple of hours. Kyiv residents tried to understand the cause of the traffic jams for a long time, until around…
Photo by Kenrick Mills on Unsplash It is exactly ten years since the death of nine-year old Ella Kissi-Debrah. She was the first person in the world to have the cause of death defined as air pollution. It happened in London, writes Philip Bushill-Matthews. The European Environment Agency in its 2021 report claimed that overall in 2018 air…
