Miliband slams Russia in Kiev
Britain's foreign secretary, David Miliband, has delivered the strongest criticism of Russia by a European minister for years in a speech in Kiev, capital of Ukraine. Mr Miliband, tipped as a potential future Prime Minister, decried Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's decision to recognised the break-away regions of Abkhazia and South... [continued]
A symphony for Tskhinvali 
In pictures: the Russian-Georgian war
Peregrine Worsthorne: real guts are needed to deal with Putin's Russia
‘Barack is ready’ says Bill Clinton
The US Democrat candidate for the White House, Barack Obama, has received a ringing public endorsement from former president Bill Clinton. Addressing 20,000 Democrat supporters, Mr Clinton said Obama was "ready to lead America" and was "the man for the job". Mr Clinton said: "Everything I learned in... [continued]
Clinton gives up the fight as Obama gets his nomination
Alexander Cockburn: Obama loses momentum in awful August
In pictures: scenes from the Democratic convention
Hutton: ‘era of cheap energy is over’
Cabinet Minister John Hutton has said that "the era of cheap energy is over". The Business Secretary told the Daily Telegraph that households would struggle to pay their heating bills this winter, but effectively ruled out imposing a windfall tax on energy firms because it would only lead to higher... [continued]
Why big oil is not to blame for fuel prices
Arson mansion: search for family
Police are hoping to gain access to a Shropshire mansion gutted in an arson attack, to search for a millionaire, his wife and their daughter. Christopher Foster, his wife Jill and their 15-year-old daughter Kirstie have not been seen since the fire in the early hours of Tuesday morning, and... [continued]
Galleries hope to save Titians
The UK's two national galleries, in England and Scotland, are hoping to raise £100m to save masterpieces by Titian for the nation. The two paintings, Diana & Actaeon and Diana & Callisto, have been on loan from the Duke of Sutherland since 1945, but now the duke hopes to raise... [continued]
Thai PM: ‘I will not use my sword’
Thai PM Samak Sundaravej has vowed not to use force to suppress protesters who are calling for his government's resignation in Bangkok. Riot police, ordered into the government buildings the demonstraters are occupying on Tuesday, have now been pulled back. Mr Samak said: "I have a sword, but I have... [continued]
Democrats in Denver
In one extraordinary passage [of his convention speech], Bill Clinton offered the way to a full reconciliation with Obama, writes Jonathan Freedland. Recalling his 1992 campaign, he said: "The Republicans said I was too young and too inexperienced to be Commander-in-Chief. Sound familiar?" He was declaring that Obama was like him, almost his political heir - and that may be the greatest endorsement of all. Barack Obama has great reason to be grateful to Bill Clinton today. He received both the backing of and a free tutorial from the man who was the best political campaigner in the second half of the 20th century. And after a vicious primary battle that had diminished his own stature, Bill Clinton also took a first, but large, stride towards restoring his own reputation. Jonathan Freedland Guardian Unlimited
Full article: The Big Dog can still hunt
Clintons give up the fight as Obama gets his nomination
The maxim that "oppositions do not win elections; governments lose them" is not just a journalistic cliché, says Anatole Kaletsky. It is a profound statement about democracy. If the Republicans can get their candidate re-elected to the White House after all their failures of the past eight years - after the military misadventures, the geopolitical blunders, the economic mishaps and the mismanagement of natural disasters - America will be perilously close to the point when democracy ceases to perform its most essential function of disciplining political power. Accountability - not personality or rhetoric or colour or age or gender - should be the overriding issue in this election. The Democrats - with their naively high-minded focus on Mr Obama's alleged achievements instead of the Bush Administration's manifest blunders - do not yet seem to have understood this. Anatole Kaletsky The Times
Full article: Americans must give the Republicans a good kicking on November 4
In pictures: The Democrats in Denver
Michelle Obama spoke eloquently of her husband's desire to shift "the world as it is" towards "the world as it should be". But Washington's capacity to do that is far less than it was in the 1940s, or even in the 1990s, when Bill Clinton was lucky enough to walk with history, writes Timothy Garton Ash. The domestic strengths of the US are also not what they were. In the ongoing credit crisis of turbo-capitalism, flagship American banks run to the sovereign wealth funds of the Middle East and east Asia for help. East bails out West. The American housing market teeters on the verge of collapse. Jobs are hard to find. Middle-class Americans slide out of healthcare and into poverty. While hundreds of billions of dollars have been squandered on war, anyone who spends time in the US can see how civil infrastructure is crumbling. Timothy Garton Ash The Guardian
Full article: The story's great, the rhetoric soars, but soon Obama must heed Canute
Russia and our own guilty men
Let us not forget our own guilty men: Tony Blair snuggling up to Vladimir Putin for nights at the opera in St Petersburg, safely distant from the howls echoing from the torture chambers of Chechnya, writes Edward Lucas. Nor our pinstriped fifth column: businessmen whose salivating pursuit of profits blinded them to the looming menace of Russia's authoritarian crony capitalism. And let us also blame the European leaders in Germany, Italy, France and elsewhere, crass and craven by turns, who have divided the continent and endangered our security. But we can still fight back. We should scrutinise the way in which Kremlin cronies use our banks to launder the billions they have stolen from the long-suffering people of Russia. We can tighten our visa rules so that Ukrainians find a warmer welcome, and Russians a colder one. Edward Lucas Daily Mail
Full article: Like any bully, Russia can be faced down. Let's do it sooner rather than later
Fashion's thin fixation
The predictable truth is that when it comes to skinny models, nothing has changed, says Hadley Freeman. Nothing. The belief in the industry remains that thinness is symbolic of wealth and aspiration. Thus the more luxurious the label, the thinner the models. Unfortunately, these luxurious labels tend to wield the most power in the industry because they make the most money: therefore they spend the most on advertising and so control the editors of the fashion magazines. These editors are, then, muzzled, and cannot admit that attending a fashion show these days is all too often like watching some shocking Panorama report about a war camp, with skeletal and purple-eyed eastern European women walking up and down runways aimlessly. Hadley Freeman The Guardian
Full article: Only the clotheshorses can buck fashion's thin fixation
Golden girl Kate Moss denies anorexia
In Brief
Miliband asks for an arms race
Russia and China are not natural allies, but Western moralism and geopolitical ambition will drive them together to resist what they see as encroachments on their space. If that happens, the world would be divided into democratic and authoritarian blocs - with a new arms race, economics turned into politics and globalisation stalled. Is this what David Miliband wants? If not, can he explain his foreign policy? Robert Skidelsky The Times
Full article: David Miliband must stop playing with fire
Miliband ratchets up the rhetoric against Russia
Who's the underdog?
As Kishore Mahbubani, Singapore's former UN ambassador, observed in the Financial Times a few days ago, "most of the world is bemused by western moralising on Georgia". While the western view is that the world "should support the underdog, Georgia, against Russia ... most support Russia against the bullying west. The gap between the western narrative and the rest of the world could not be clearer." Seumas Milne The Guardian
Full article: Georgia is the graveyard of America's unipolar world
How Brown will be deposed
The revolt against Gordon Brown was never going to be a continuous build-up. These things tend not to be. With Tony Blair, the conditions were set, first by the Iraq war and then by his refusal to condemn the Israeli invasion of the Lebanon in 2006. But it was not until a totally unrepentant interview in The Times seven weeks later – after the summer holidays – that Labour MPs went into what Nye Bevan might have called an emotional spasm. John Rentoul The Independent
Full article: Brown will be ditched. But when?
The dream was a myth
Movies are very seldom offensive. In the golden days of popular cinema, it was an unwritten rule that studios ignored all those subjects likely to cause upset. Gradually this led to the vague dream of an utterly homogeneous society. This dream was a myth. David Thomson The Guardian
Full article: The right to cause offence
Film reviews: Angel, Step Brothers, Time and Winds, The Wackness
Fake police
The latest addition to this "extended family" of quasi-police officers are "accredited workers" – but the people concerned do not wear a uniform we might readily recognise, and could just be the geezer minding the car park who turns out to have the authority to demand my name and address, and then issues me with a fine if I am stroppy. Janet Street-Porter The Independent
Full article: Get these fake police officers off our streets
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