Current Affairs

Elections on the horizon in Israel. The Washington Post gives a rundown of recent events and what happens next.

The Guardian has a despatch from Pyinmana – the small town that has unexpectedly become the new capital of Burma/Myanmar. It’s conveniently situated 250 miles into the jungle, away from the former capital Rangoon/Yangon.

The BBC reports that trials will take place of x-ray machines and body scanners at railway stations. This will slow up passengers and ensure that money is diverted away from services, while also providing no extra security (since not all stations can or will be covered). Alastair Darling’s view:

Battered by the OFT’s claims of fee-fixing, the Independent Schools Council has come out whining. In a statement quoted at the BBC News website, their general secretary, Jonathan Shephard, managed to exhibit all the worst traits of the English middle classes, self-righteousness, special pleading and defensiveness. His bleat was,

Pat Robertson, former presidential candidate and evangelical wingnut, has told the people of Dover (PA): If there is a disaster in your area, don’t turn to God — you just rejected Him from your city. Why? Well, at the elections last week Dover’s citizens booted out their school board

A European monitoring centre reports that Britain has done well on combatting racism since the tube bombings.

In the final act of the hilarious school fee fixing scandal, the OFT has ruled that 50 independent schools may have broken competition law by telling each other what they were going to charge parents. This sort of information exchange, as you might imagine, is just slightly illegal. If the

BBC news reports that Kaliningrad (Królowiec, Koenigsberg) – the capital of that small sliver of Russia that used to be a bit of German East Prussia – is going to erect a statue, and name a square in honour of, one Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Given that the city’s existence in its

Le Figaro reports that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, new president of Iran, has called for Israel to be ‘wiped off the map’ – the first time for several years that an Iranian leader has made such a statement. The Paris government has condemned the statement. No sign of it on the British or

As the death toll of US service personnel in Iraq touches 2,000 (and, of course the death toll of Iraqis is much higher), the New York Times has a long piece profiling some of the families of the dead.