Labour in crisis: whoever is prime minister, voters expect politicians to use the language of populism
Beyond the high drama surrounding the Makerfield by-election and the contest to be the UK prime minister lies a more fundamental battle. It is the struggle between the incremental pragmatism of mainstream politics and the magical thinking of populism. The great catchword of recent UK politics has been “change”. Brexit, it was said, would change […]
Xi warned Trump against the ‘Thucydides Trap’ – here’s what ancient Greece can tell us about US-China relations
Thucydides recounted how rising power Athens challenged Sparta, resulting in a destructive 30-year war. Natalllenka.m/Shutterstock In his opening remarks at his summit with Donald Trump on May 15, the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, invoked the fifth-century BC Greek historian Thucydides to issue a veiled warning to the US president. “The world has come to a […]
Raghu Rai: the trailblazing photographer who documented the vast diversity of a changing India
In April, as India’s governing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ran elections in parts of the country, a visionary Indian passed away. He went quietly, much as he had lived, and left behind a vast photographic archive of the world’s most populous nation. Raghu Rai (1942-2026) was India’s foremost photographer. Born prior to independence […]
Why European households throw away so much food – and how to curb the waste mountain
ArieStudio/Shutterstock Europe is wasting huge amounts of food while millions of people globally experience hunger. Wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have squeezed supply chains. The cost of living crisis has pushed many families to the edge. Without strengthening environmental sustainability, supply chain resilience and household affordability, food security risks will increase significantly. Yet […]
The Pennine hills are full of holes – here’s how they’re helping fight climate change
Excavators cut shallow areas in the peatlands as part of a project to develop more wetlands. Adam Johnston, CC BY-SA Thousands of holes are appearing in the Pennine hills, as part of efforts to improve carbon storage by restoring damaged peatland. Peat itself is carbon rich and so as it grows it will help to […]
Ebola outbreak declared a global health emergency – what you need to know
The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo a “public health emergency of international concern”, with cases now confirmed in neighbouring Uganda. Here is what you need to know. What is Ebola? Ebola is a serious potentially fatal infectious disease. It causes fever, damage to blood […]
Sweeteners and the quest for the perfect alternative to sugar
Sweets for my sweets … Fuss Sergey Designing a series of sweetener trials seemed straightforward enough to us as behavioural scientists who specialise in human appetite and obesity. The plan was simple: replace the added sugar in a range of foods with different classes of alternative sweeteners, holding everything else constant. We would start with […]
Floods and finance: why climate change will become a more pressing economic problem for UK households
A street in Worcester, England, after heavy rainfall in 2023. Chris Homer/Shutterstock New Orleans could be surrounded by sea water in a matter of decades according to new research. The study says the US city has reached a “point of no return”, and that rising temperatures and sea levels mean the process of relocating residents […]
The puppet shows bringing storytelling and solace to bomb shelters in Ukraine
As war threatens to erase everyday life in Ukraine, artists have turned to puppetry, one of the oldest forms of storytelling. Light enough to travel, intimate enough to gather a crowd and able to capture the attention of children, puppet shows have become resilient tools of resistance, support and relief for the people of a […]
Donald Trump left Beijing empty-handed – but avoided something worse
When Britain sent its first formal diplomatic mission to China in 1793, one of the participants from London, Peter Auber, remarked that the group had been “received with the utmost politeness, treated with the utmost hospitality, watched with the utmost vigilance and dismissed with the utmost civility”. The mission, which aimed to open trade and […]