A dangerous dam-building race is threatening South Asia’s shared rivers
Bangladesh’s many rivers. Best-Backgrounds / Shutterstock Bangladesh has just approved one of the largest river engineering projects its history: the Padma Barrage, a vast river-control project intended to restore water in the country’s drought-prone southwest. It comes at a dangerous moment for South Asia’s rivers. China is building the world’s largest hydropower dam upstream on […]
Marilyn Monroe at 100: Hollywood made her a myth – she spent her life resisting it
“I can be smart when it matters, but most men don’t like it,” says Lorelei Lee in the 1953 comedy musical, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. This famous quip from Howard Hawks’ film sums up for us the fate of the star who uttered it. Marilyn Monroe confronted the pitilessness of the 1950s Hollywood studio system during […]
Why Donald Trump’s latest plan for peace is a non-starter
Sooner or later in every armed conflict, someone will trot out the well-worn aphorism that “Truth is the first casualty of war.” And certainly, in the Iran war truth beat a hasty retreat as soon as the US and Israel launched their attacks on Iran and Lebanon on February 28. But what was meant to […]
How and where global 2 billion barrels of strategic oil reserves are stockpiled
The U.S. stores its strategic oil reserves in subterranean salt caverns along the Gulf Coast, like this one in West Hackberry, Louisiana, photographed on June 1, 1980. Robert Nickelsberg/Hulton Archive via Getty Images Drive on Interstate 10 along the Gulf Coast of the United States, through Louisiana and into Texas, and you’ll see signs of […]
Trump’s call to expand Abraham accords is destined to fail
As negotiations to end the Iran war continued on May 25, Donald Trump made a series of phone calls in which he pressed key leaders from the Middle East to join the Abraham accords. Announced in 2020, these accords established diplomatic relations between Israel and several Arab states, beginning with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) […]
Greater Israel: the origins of the settler movement now threatening to annexe the West Bank
A big increase in violence on the West Bank has prompted the EU to issue sanctions on several individuals and groups that allegedly organise and finance illegal Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territory. Under the 1993 Oslo accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the West Bank and Gaza were designated as Palestinian […]
Magistrates courts are already under huge amounts of pressure – cutting jury trials will make things worse
chrisdorney/Shutterstock Proposals to cut the use of jury trials for most offences would be one of the most significant legal reforms in UK history. The government’s plans have prompted much debate in legal circles and beyond – mainly around whether they go against the UK’s democratic principles. The government’s hope is that reducing jury trials […]
Why safer spaces matter for young people’s physical activity
Sabrina Bracher/Shutterstock The 2026 Commonwealth Games come to Scotland this summer, showcasing elite athletes at the top of their game. But for most of us, physical activity looks much more ordinary: walking to school, joining a PE lesson, dancing in the kitchen or going to the gym. Now think about how that kind of movement […]
The Enhanced Games set out to ‘transform sport’ but the results looked surprisingly ordinary
The Enhanced Games promised a revolution. Athletes on supervised drug regimens, unshackled from the anti-doping rules of the Olympics, were going to show us what the human body was truly capable of. The event was transhumanism in practice – a glimpse at humanity’s athletic future. What it actually delivered was a single world record, broken […]
The story of Pope Leo’s ‘landmark’ text on AI technology – by a member of its launch panel
For the last few years, I’ve been seconded to assist the Catholic Church’s unprecedented global grassroots listening initiative. Just as that process drew to a close, I received a surprise request: would I help Pope Leo XIV launch his first social encyclical, focused on what it means to be human in a time of artificial […]