Bush threatens to exclude Russia
President George W Bush delivered a tough warning to Russia yesterday, saying that it risks isolation abroad as US troops were dispatched into Georgia. Delivering his strongest criticism of the Kremlin since becoming President, Bush threatened Russia with punishment for breaching the ceasefire. The US is in talks with allies... [continued]
In pictures: five days in Georgia 
Russia knew the West wouldn't dare step in
British aid worker killed by Taliban ambush
A British aid worker has been killed in a Taliban ambush in Afghanistan. Dr Jacqueline Kirk (pictured), who held dual British and Canadian citizenship, was travelling in a car that was clearly marked with the International Rescue Committee logo. She was killed along with two female colleagues, a Canadian and... [continued]
Suicide bombers: a message from al-Qaeda
Pressure on Tsvangirai to sign deal
Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai is facing pressure to sign a power-sharing deal with Robert Mugabe, after the president reportedly struck a deal with Arthur Mutambara, the leader of an opposition splinter group. Tsvangirai walked out of the negotiations at the Rainbow Towers hotel in Harare yesterday, claiming... [continued]
Zimbabwe Today: exclusive reports from Moses Moyo in Harare
Thailand seeks to extradite Thaksin
Thailand will seek extradition from Britain of Thaksin Shinawatra in order to bring the former prime minister to trial for corruption. Thaksin, who also owns the football club Manchester City, skipped bail and fled to England with his wife Potjaman last weekend, after attending the opening ceremony of the Olympic... [continued]
Stagg wins £700,000 compensation
Colin Stagg, who was cleared of the murder of Rachel Nickell on Wimbledon Common in 1992, yesterday described the £706,000 damages awarded to him by the Home Office as like "winning the lottery". Stagg spent a year in custody before the case against him was dismissed at the... [continued]
Police told to ‘work-to-rule’
Police officers have been urged by their union to effectively begin a 'work-to-rule' after pay negotiations with the Home Office broke down at the end of last month. The police union has called for some 140,000 rank-and-file officers to keep strictly to their terms and conditions of employment, meaning that... [continued]
King: UK on brink of recession
The governor of the Bank of England has issued his starkest warning yet over the economy, saying for the first time that Britain is now on the verge of recession. Mervyn King's bleak prediction last night that a "difficult and painful" period would bring the economy to a halt over... [continued]
Tchenguiz buys back Laurel pubs
Iranian property tycoon Robert Tchenguiz has taken back control nearly all of the Laurel pub chain, which he controversially put into administration earlier this year. In March Tchenguiz put Laurel's 383 pubs and restaurants into administration but promptly bought back 292 of the sites via two new companies, Town &... [continued]
Lessons from the Caucasus
Despite sporadic breaches - on both sides - Russia has blunted Georgian charges that this is a war of annihilation, writes Michael Binyon. Moscow can also counter Georgian PR, the last weapon left to Tbilisi. Human rights? Look at what Georgia has done in South Ossetia (and also in Abkhazia). National sovereignty? Look at the detachment of Kosovo from Serbia. False pretexts? Look at Ronald Reagan's invasion of Grenada to "rescue" US medical students. Western outrage? Look at the confused cacophony. There are lessons everywhere. To the former Soviet republics - remember your geography. To Nato - do you still want to incorporate Caucasian vendettas into your alliance? To Tbilisi - do you want to keep a President who brought this on you? To Washington - does Russia's voice still count for nothing? Like it or not, it counts for a lot. Michael Binyon The Times
Full article: Vladimir Putin's mastery checkmates the West
Eye-witness account: Into South Ossetia with dull-eyed Alik
We need to criticise Islam
Why bother criticising religion if it causes so much hassle, asks Johann Hari? The answer is: look back at our history. How did Christianity lose its ability to terrorise people with phantasms of sin and Hell? Because critics pored over the religion's stories and found gaping holes of logic or morality in them. How could an angel inseminate a virgin? Why does the Old Testament God command his followers to commit genocide? Reinterpretation and ridicule crow-barred Christianity open. Ask enough tough questions and faith is inevitably pushed farther and farther back into the misty realm of metaphor – where it is less likely to inspire people to kill and die for it. But doubtful Muslims cannot ask: what does it reveal about Mohammed that he married a young girl, or that he massacred a village of Jews who refused to follow him? Johann Hari The Independent
Full article: We need to stop being such cowards about Islam
Book about Mohammed's child bride censored by publisher
More ignorance from Prince Charles
What is it with the Prince of Wales? He seems physically incapable of keeping his mouth shut, says Stephen Pollard. Do you know what his mother thinks about GM crops? Do you know what the Queen thinks about anything? Of course not. Unlike her son, she realises that the moment she enters the world of politics is the moment that the monarchy ceases to exist. I've yet to hear Prince Charles decry the use of insulin for diabetics as a 'real disaster'. But if he rejects, on principle, the idea of GM crops, he should, because the insulin used is genetically engineered - the human gene that codes for insulin has been transferred into bacteria and yeast, a process that involves crossing the species barrier. But then ignorance need not be consistent. Stephen Pollard The Times
Full article: Prince Charles should keep his GM ideas to himself
MPs skewer 'Luddite' Charles
Our educational time-warp
Society, meanwhile, needs to get over its educational nostalgia, says Mary Riddell. Venerating the 'gold standard' of A-levels (while simultaneously decrying them as a dumbed-down fix) is part of a national delusion. We're stuck in a Brideshead time-warp, in which the most privileged vie for the 'best' places in the hierarchy of learning, and too many struggle to survive. On education, governments have one core role. It is not to produce East Anglia's answer to Cicero, or to finesse the next Bill Gates from a business-oriented NVQ. It's not even (desirable as that might be) to stuff the common rooms of Balliol with summa cum laude graduates of inner-city comprehensives. Its duty is to provide all its citizens with a fine basic education. That is the only test that matters. After 11 years of Labour, it has still not been met.
Mary Riddell Daily Telegraph
Full article: Illiterate school-leavers are the problem, not a surfeit of A grades
Tabloids run drug policy
I recall a conversation I had with a Number 10 policy advisor about a series of announcements in which we were to emphasise the shift of resources to treatment and highlight successes in prevention and education, writes Julian Critchley. She asked me whether we couldn't arrange for "a drugs bust in Brighton" at the same time, or "a boat speeding down the Thames to catch smugglers". For that advisor, what worked mattered considerably less than what would play well in the right-wing press. The tragedy of our drugs policy is that it is dictated by tabloid irrationality, and not by evidence.
Julian Critchley The Independent
Full article: All the experts admit that we should legalise drugs
Bitty, brutal, shifting world
Russia does pose a problem to Europe and the West. Its fierce form of nationalism poses a host of questions about resources, defence and the future of a whole host of individual countries through the Caucasus and central Asia. It's not the Cold War we're returning to, but the bitty, brutal and shifting world of the 19th century. Only we don't have the gunboats to control it. Adrian Hamilton The Independent
Full article: We are still fighting the Cold War
Strange but similar creatures
Communities have always defined the frontiers of their civilisation by dangerous, unknown beasts: the Loch Ness Monster; Mamlambo, the river monster of South Africa; the Aye-Aye in Paraguay, a sort of vicious tree-dwelling sheep. What is extraordinary about them is not their variety, but their remarkable similarity across time and geography. The hairy almost-human is ubiquitous. Ben Macintyre The Times
Full article: Creatures that inhabit our guilty conscience
Cult of luxury
Hostility to the mass is ingrained in the post-Enlightenment liberalism that dominates Western political culture, and has only been exacerbated by a century of vicious totalitarianism. The modern cult of luxury is the bastard child of that bleak history. It's fundamentally misanthropic, profoundly scared, snarling at the dollar-a-day world from behind a Fendi fence. Hari Kunzru The Guardian
Full article: The expensive search for what money can never buy
Stealing from hotels
In December 2006 I went to a Christmas dinner at the Adelphi hotel, once the Claridge's of Liverpool, only to find a notice in the bedroom saying, 'All electrical items removed from this room to be paid for' as if it were a cheap hostel where all its guests were thieves.
Edwina Currie Daily Mail
Full article: Isn't it time we Scousers admitted some home truths?
Sticking to procedures
Too many organisations seem to imagine that sticking to procedures is in itself a virtue. That's not how it feels to those of us at the receiving end of this inflexible, wooden approach. Too often it feels as if we're being corralled into a cage made by madmen, pleading for some kind of intelligence or humanity from the person in front of us or on the end of the phone. Jenni Russell The Guardian
Full article: Just following procedure - that's the mantra of cost-cutting Britain
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