In late August 2021, the US completed its withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, ending a 20-year occupation. The Taliban retook the country with shocking speed. The Islamic fundamentalist political group was founded in 1994 and controlled most of Afghanistan until the US-led campaign ousted it in 2001. Now it facesContinue Reading
The author has an evening cuppa while searching for a lost convoy of medical supplies – in remote Zibok district (1996). © Sippi Azarbaijani Moghaddam, Author provided It was April 1995, and I was preparing to travel to Afghanistan for my first volunteer post with a UK charity. I hadContinue Reading
The Ministry of Justice is banking on England and Wales’ prison numbers rising by 23.7% by March 2026, predicting that the prison population will climb from 79,580 to 98,500. Matched by an intention to build space for 20,000 extra prison places, this would take numbers to an all-time high forContinue Reading
Fifty-five years after gaining independence from Britain in 1966, Barbados has become a republic – and other Commonwealth countries, where support for the monarchy is becoming more volatile than ever, could well follow in its wake. The change to a republic has been a long time coming for the 300,000Continue Reading
Train journeys have been embraced as climate-friendly travel. Michael715/Shutterstock Air travel is often presented as desirable, despite its high environmental cost. In Sweden, however, a movement advocating avoiding flying has gained influence since 2016, and has started to change the way travel is portrayed in the Swedish media. Going onContinue Reading
Dropping the Leeds branch of HS2 has been seen as a betrayal of the north. Martin D Brown | Shutterstock In 2009, the company HS2 was set up to provide a new high-speed rail line in England. It was planned to be built in two stages. Phase one would goContinue Reading
Maxal Tamor/Shutterstock (with elements supplied by Nasa) According to media reports from Washington, the Biden administration wants to engage China in talks on arms control and non-proliferation. The US president, Joe Biden, and Chinese leader, Xi Jinping discussed the issue during their recent virtual summit. The issue has not previouslyContinue Reading
At age 11, children from poorly educated families are as interested in politics as children from well-educated ones. But by the time they turn 15, children with well-educated parents are 10% more interested in politics than those with poorly educated parents. The social gap in political engagement is one ofContinue Reading
Acoustic waves can detect all kinds of explosions and volcanic activity, but it’s hard to place sensors at sea—unless you’ve got a bird with a backpack.Continue Reading
Updated at 13:30 The State is studying more than 10 possible cases of the new Omicron coronavirus variant after initial tests showed they had a trait distinguishing it from the dominant Delta variant, Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly has said. Unlike Delta, which has dominated infections worldwide this year, OmicronContinue Reading
