Resigning United Kingdom minister Clare Short this week escalated her dispute with Tony Blair’s style of leadership far beyond the Iraq war controversy when she urged the prime minister to start preparing ‘an elegant succession’ for Gordon Brown — or risk spoiling his own historic achievements.
A British government inquiry will reveal on Monday that the brains of thousands of depressed people were illegally removed after their deaths and kept for medical research over a 30-year period, The Times newspaper said.
Martha Lane Fox, co-founder of travel firm Lastminute.com, was so affected by the story of Ryan Matthews, and the shoddy evidence that marred his trial, that she paid for his legal team to conduct DNA tests which have cleared Matthews of the crime and pointed the finger at the true killer.
GlaxoSmithKline, the British pharmaceutical giant, has slashed the price of its Aids drugs to sub-Saharan Africa and the rest of the world’s poorest countries, it announced today.
Negotiations about about a possible alliance between Saddam Hussein’s regime and al-Qaeda took place in 1998, according to documents found in Baghdad by a British newspaper.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard and Commonwealth Secretary-General Don McKinnon are due to meet on Wednesday for talks likely to be dominated by Zimbabwe.
The Japanese electronics giant Sony has taken an extraordinary step to cash in on the war in Iraq by patenting the term ”Shock and Awe” for a computer game.
Did Madonna pull her latest video from circulation as a clever marketing ploy for her new album? Alexis Petridis reports from London.
Whiling away the afternoon on the laptop nestled into a comfy sofa in the corner of a coffee shop has a certain appeal. Settling into a yellow plastic chair in McDonald’s surrounded by screaming kids to write your great novel doesn’t have quite the same magic.
There has been some useful stuff in the newspapers about women, recently. More specifically, what exactly it means when they do strange, hitherto inexplicable things, as you’re talking to them.
In times of strife, it is good to know who your friends are. So, in the absence of support from traditional allies such as France and Germany, it will come as welcome news to British troops in the Gulf this week that when the going gets tough, Azerbaijan is right behind them.
The landscape after the battle, in a conquered country, does not smile on a warm morning of freedom. Instead, there begins a rat-infested twilight, and many of the rats are human.
Plans to build sewerage works for the 1,2-billion people in the world who live without fresh water and sanitation should be abandoned, says Michael Rouse, the incoming president of the World Water Association.
Britain’s Foreign Office warned on Friday that there was an increased terrorist threat to travellers in seven East African nations after the launch of the US-led war on Iraq.
The Commonwealth’s decision to extend Zimbabwe’s suspension from its councils for a further nine months was not taken by the Troika appointed to deal with the issue, says the South African High Commissioner to London.
In the assault on Iraq, the United States is likely to unleash a new and devastatingly effective breed of weapon against Saddam Hussein’s forces. Launched in a cruise missile, it will fire a massive pulse of microwave energy.
Zimbabwe’s suspension from the councils of the Commonwealth is to remain in place until December, Commonwealth secretary-general Don McKinnon said in London on Sunday.
The United States Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, recently argued that the military should again be allowed to use chemicals as weapons of war in Iraq. He wants to use the US’s stockpile of ”non-lethal” chemical agents, particularly those used for riot control. What Rumsfeld is proposing is illegal.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair held an emergency ”war Cabinet” meeting yesterday to finalise plans for military action against Iraq and demand that the United Nations comes to a decision on the vital second resolution against Saddam Hussein within 24 hours.
Oil prices could race to well over per barrel and ”ruin” the world economy if Iraqi crude output is severely hit by a US military strike, former Saudi oil minister Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani said in London yesterday.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair will fly to the Portuguese islands of the Azores tomorrow for a meeting with George Bush to discuss plans for war as the British diplomatic push continues to flounder at the United Nations.
France’s threat to deploy its UN veto is making war with Iraq more — not less — likely by preventing the security council from enforcing its own decisions, says British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.
Frantic diplomatic talks were continuing at the UN today, with Britain and the US making a final push to win backing for a second security council resolution on Iraq, as the leading proponents of war planned a three-way summit to discuss their position.
France’s threat to deploy its UN veto is making war with Iraq more — not less — likely by preventing the security council from enforcing its own decisions, says British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.
BP is facing a record -million pollution fine and allegations that the oil company submitted false documentation to air quality control regulators in the United States.
If the UN were a kindergarten, it would definitely be time to call a time out. The diplomatic fun and games over Iraq have grown way too intense. What started as an orderly, sit-down, knees-crossed group discussion is now an over-excited, slightly hysterical free for all.
Torturers are never happier than when messing around with a victim’s genitals. And, you have to say, their imagination knows no bounds: torturers are supremely creative, more so even than advertising copywriters
No image available
/ 28 February 2003
Derek Bond, the British tourist who spent nearly three weeks in a South African police cell after authorities mistook him for a fraud suspect, on Friday said the ordeal had made him fear for his life.
No image available
/ 19 February 2003
British shadow foreign secretary, Michael Ancram, has formed an unlikely alliance with human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell to have the Zimbabwean president, Robert Mugabe, arrested on his visit to Paris.
Mugabe in Paris for summit
No image available
/ 13 February 2003
Britain plans to introduce compulsory HIV tests for immigrants after new cases of the virus soared 26% in the last year, The Times newspaper said on Thursday.
No image available
/ 12 February 2003
Rumours of the existence of a surface-to-air missile in the hands of al-Qaeda terrorists received wide publicity in Britain on Wednesday, as 1 500 police and troops with tanks conducted a highly publicised deployment at London’s main airport.