MARYLAND, USA, September 2007
The US and UK governments are developing increasingly sophisticated gadgets to keep individuals under their surveillance. When it comes to technology, the US is determined to stay ahead of the game. […]
Read MoreFrom Our Own Correspondent
Small town with a big heart
FRAMINGTON, USA, June 2007
Heart disease kills more than 17 million people a year worldwide and a study that has been under way in the US since the end of World War II has played a crucial role in determining the way the medical profession approaches it today. […]
Read MoreThe democratic mission
BAGHDAD, IRAQ, May 2007
Four years after George Bush declared an end to ‘major combat operations in Iraq’ its parliamentary democracy is barely functioning. Members of the 275 member parliament face constant threats. No substantive legislation has been passed, but it has debated an international agreement on olive farming. The success of Iraq’s parliament is crucial if the country is to ever function on its own. […]
Read MoreHow Kosovo worked
BAGHDAD, IRAQ, May 2007
Four years after George Bush declared an end to ‘major combat operations in Iraq’ its parliamentary democracy is barely functioning. Members of the 275 member parliament face constant threats. No substantive legislation has been passed, but it has debated an international agreement on olive farming. The success of Iraq’s parliament is crucial if the country is to ever function on its own. […]
Read MoreHell escape
LANCASTER, OHIO November 2006
America’s Republican party is bracing itself for sweeping losses in elections next week for state governors and members of Congress. For the Presidential election two years ago I visited one of the key electoral battlegrounds, the small mid-west town of Lancaster, Ohio, to examine what President Bush George had to do to hold onto power. I went back to see how views had changed. […]
Read MoreReporting from Israel
ILANIYYA, ISRAEL August 2006
With the Middle East reeling from yet another Arab-Israeli war, descendants of the settlers who built one of the oldest Jewish villages in Galilee in the mid 19th Century tell how they would never have come if they’d known the violence would have lasted so long.[…]
Read MorePeace? With our politicians – never
NICOSIA, CYPRUS June 2006
After more than two years of stagnation, the leaders of Greek and Turkish Cyprus are due to meet early next month to see if there’s any way the island can be re-unified. The island has been divided by a UN buffer zone since Turkey invaded in 1974 – it says, to stop killings of the Turkish Cypriot community. The two leaders Tassos Papadopoulos and Mehmet Ali Talat never speak and there’s been no official contact between the two sides since a UN referendum on unification failed in 2004. […]
Read MoreLenin and Mao – One day they’ll get it right
CALCUTTA, May 2006
The people of West Bengal have voted in the Communist Party for the seventh successive time. In its capital, Calcutta, a statue of Lenin dominates a main square and red flags of the hammer and sickle fly everywhere. So why have Indians not debunked communism? […]
Read MoreChina in the backyard
SAO PAULO April 2006
The United States and China will talk next week about China’s growing involvement in Latin America. In the past two years China has invested billions in the region – which Washington has, up to now, regarded as its sphere of interest. […]
Read MoreReporting from Poland
KRAKOW, POLAND February 2006
The southern Polish city of Krakow was once a centre of Jewish culture with a thriving community. For more than seven hundred years 70 per cent of the international Jewish community had some link back to Poland. Then came the Nazis; then the Soviet Union. And now Krakow Jewish community is technically only about 150 – although with Nazi and Soviet pogroms many covered up their true origins, and the real numbers are only just becoming known. […]
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