Stephen Fry has boasted of taking drugs in royal palaces and famous hotels Photo: REX FEATURES Someone once called Stephen Fry “a stupid person’s idea of what a clever person is like”. Which is unkind: there’s nothing wicked about being a bit stupid, or admiring celebrities who seem brainy and cuddly, or enjoying a faux-donnish, avuncular figure who admits his problems with depression and makes you feel as […]
David Cameron has said he will keep the Barnett Formula but Scotland must expect extra responsibility and any deal must be fair to all parts of the UK Photo: FACUNDO ARRIZABALAGA/EPA The Scottish inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, coined the phrase “When one door closes, another opens”. His fellow Scots’ nail-biting rejection of independence shelves the debate on secession. But it prises open the possibility of […]
The e-borders system, which is supposed to stop a person coming to the UK if they have previously been deported or excluded from the country, has failed to intercept a single individual despite a £500 million IT project Photo: Reuters The disclosure that the chief suspect in the case of the missing schoolgirl Alice Gross is a convicted Latvian killer who should not have been in the country […]
Ortolans are trapped and put, alive, into a vat of Armagnac before they are cooked Photo: MaxPPP The customary way of eating ortolan, a delicate songbird, involves the diner covering his or her head with a large napkin. Tradition dictates that this is to shield – from God’s eyes – the shame of such a decadent and disgraceful act. But if a clutch of leading French chefs have […]
‘Yes’ supporters demonstrate outside BBC Scotland’s headquarters in Glasgow, calling for the sacking of the BBC’s political editor, Nick Robinson Photo: Rex Features The significance of tomorrow’s referendum on Scottish independence is impossible to exaggerate. Scots will be faced with a choice whose consequences will echo down the ages – namely, whether to break apart a Union that has stood for more than 300 years, and instead become […]
More and more places in Hong Kong now accept Chinese yuan Photo: ALAMY Lord Patten was the last governor of Hong Kong, and still, it seems, has a keen interest in its affairs. He has written a piece for The Financial Times, extolling his views on Britain’s “moral and political obligation” to its former colony. But his words, like his actions as governor, reveal that he never understood […]
Jeremy Paxman, who is a quarter Scot, would have like a say in the future of the Union Photo: PA/BBC On Thursday, the English will discover what the Scots really think of them. Like the final row in a troubled marriage, it could be the event that serves to separate those we were once told God had joined together. The decision is not for those of us who […]
By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI and KIMIKO DE FREYTAS-TAMURA September 13, 2014 The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria released a video Saturday of the third beheading of a foreign hostage, a British aid worker. The execution was a clear message to Britain, a vital ally of the United States as it builds an international coalition to target the militant group, which has made stunning advances across Syria and northern Iraq in recent months. […]
The 1980s and 1970s were many things – but only a fool, wallowing in a Slush Puppie vat of nostalgia, could claim they were a golden age of childhood Crouching over a tape recorder in an attempt to capture the Top 40 on a TDK magnetic cassette; writing letters to an overseas penfriend; popping down to Boots to have your holiday snaps developed. These are just some […]
A new set of figures was published last week. The figures were released without much fanfare, but they are potentially explosive: a rising proportion of premature babies born at 23 weeks are surviving. More accurately, Britain’s best neonatal units are saving them. Freedom of information requests from 25 hospitals revealed that 120 babies born at 23 weeks survived over the past four years (likely to be more […]
By Leila Abboud PARIS Mon Sep 8, 2014 12:50pm IST A computer user poses in front of a Google search page in this photo illustration taken in Brussels May 30, 2014. Credit: Reuters/Francois Lenoir/Files A panel appointed by search engine Google will hold the first of a series of meetings on Tuesday to debate the balance between privacy and the free flow of information after a May […]
Tory strategists: George Osborne and Lynton Crosby (right) Photo: REX FEATURES The Scottish opinion polls were looking bad for the “No” campaign. Their ratings were sliding downhill faster than a fat man on a skeleton bob. A new report had claimed that there was £300 billion’s worth of oil waiting to be fracked off the coast of Scotland. And all they could offer to stem the Nationalist surge were […]
Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. . . more could be done to improve the productivity of each police officer, says Tom Winsor Photo: Alamy At first, when her south London flat was broken into last winter, Zena Ambrose couldn’t have been more impressed with the response from the police. The communications consultant returned home from work late at night to find a burglar had stolen her MacBook, driving licence and designer clothes […]
By Noel Randewich and Diane Bartz SAN FRANCISCO/WASHINGTON Fri Sep 5, 2014 9:21am IST Visitors walk past the Qualcomm stand at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, February 24, 2014. Credit: Reuters/Albert Gea/Files SAN FRANCISCO/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Nvidia Corp has sued rival chipmakers Qualcomm and Samsung Electronics, accusing both companies of infringing its patents on graphics processing technology. The U.S. chipmaker vies with Qualcomm in the business […]
Islamic debt could become a source of funding for U.K. infrastructure projects from wind turbines to high-speed trains and airports as Britain cements its position as the first sukuk market in a non-Muslim nation. Investors including Bank of London and the Middle East see scope for the U.K. to issue Shariah-compliant bonds with varying maturities after the Debt Management Office attracted bids for more than 10 times […]
Iran’s possible response to new U.S. sanctions could “not be pleasant”, its foreign minister said on Sunday, raising the prospect of tit-for-tat retribution against the Islamic Republic’s old adversary weeks ahead of fresh nuclear talks. Iranian leaders reacted with dismay to Friday’s announcement that Washington was going to penalize a number of Iranian and other foreign companies, banks and airlines for violating sanctions against Tehran, most of […]
Barack Obama got a warm reception in Rhode Island last week, yet his lack of strategy has dismayed many others Photo: AP Just in case you thought that the Leader of the Free World was secretly harbouring a calculated, well-developed plan for bringing Isil under control and putting Russia’s imperial leader back in his box, Barack Obama banged that idea firmly on the head last week. He gave […]
Hong Kong’s government will hold investor meetings next week for its maiden Islamic bond issue, a spokeswoman for the Hong Kong Monetary Authority said on Thursday. A meeting will be held in Hong Kong on Monday before one in Singapore on Tuesday, Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday and meetings in Dubai, Doha, Abu Dhabi and London on Thursday. The AAA-rated government earlier mandated HSBC, Standard Chartered, CIMB Group […]
The Floating Cinema drops anchor on the Grand Union Canal at King’s Cross, London Photo: HYDAR DEWACHI ‘It’s really captured people’s imagination,” enthuse producer Anna Ramsay and curator Laura Harford as they sit on the deck of the Floating Cinema, their 60ft wide-beam canal boat fitted out as a mini-Odeon. “I think it’s because it’s something so unusual, not at all what they expect to see on a […]
Most of the rest of the world is horrified that so much British ice cream is made up of vegetable fat and air Photo: REX FEATURES The Ice Cream War was one of Scotland’s most notorious criminal cases. It involved two rival Glasgow families using ice cream vans to sell drugs and stolen goods in the Eighties. The vicious turf war culminated in arson and murder. Now, a […]
(Reuters) – Swiss authorities have warned that a plan by Etihad Airways to buy a third of Switzerland’s Darwin Airline does not meet legal requirements to be approved, as foreign stakes in European airlines come under increasing scrutiny. Switzerland’s Federal Office of Civil Aviation (FOCA) said that Darwin, rebranded as Etihad Regional, has until Sept. 30 to make changes to the agreement, which would then undergo a […]
Letter From Europe Britons, including Anglican clergy members worried about the plight of beleaguered Iraqi Christians, accuse Prime Minister David Cameron of incoherence. By ALAN COWELL August 21, 2014 LONDON — For a century and more, Iraq has been the graveyard of Western dreams, often literally, from the defeat of British colonial forces in the First Battle of Kut in 1916 to the bloodshed that flowed from the American-led […]
James Foley described himself as ‘a war protester’ who retrained as a journalist (EPA) • Latest developments following beheading of James Foley ‘I had made the gruelling journey by car, but Jim Foley, ever resourceful, arrived by Chinook helicopter. The destination was Sirte, the Libyan city where, in October 2011, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and his troops were making a last stand. Foley had caught a lift with […]
The Islamic State militant group has executed 700 members of a tribe it has been battling in eastern Syria during the past two weeks, the majority of them civilians, a human rights monitoring group and activists said on Saturday. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has tracked violence on all sides of the three-year-old conflict, said reliable sources reported beheadings were used to execute many of […]
