I’m sure I’m not the only one who has at times blurted out an inappropriate remark or two. Never intended to be harmful or malicious, but sometimes it’s just the wrong thing. For example when meeting the brother of one of my friends...

France continues with the expulsion of Roma people into eastern Europe, despite a growing tide of outrage against this targeting of a particular ethnic group. The French Minister of immigration Eric Besson has announced that around 250...

I’ve just got back to the Edinburgh office from the ceremony to announce the 2010 Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Award, and can happily announce that Cora Bissett’s ‘Roadkill’ was the winner. The play tackles the issue of...

Sometimes it takes a twist to make something appealing, and one heavyweight TV programme that still sticks in my mind is the Will Self-fronted investigation into Britain’s arms industry from 2002. Though I’m no fan of his novels (his...

Good news from the world of mining isn’t just coming in the form of improvised telephones for trapped miners in Chile. Today we learned that the Indian Ministry of Environment and Forests has rejected a mining project proposed by UK...

In a bid to expose its execution practice, Japan will allow journalists to visit its Tokyo chamber of death for the first time. Richard Lloyd Parry in The Times reports that ‘executions are a mixture of the chilling and the...

In the past it’s been the gouging out of an eye or the extraction of a tooth. Now it’s the severing of spinal column. The Saudi justice system’s willingness to countenance extreme and cruel punishments is once again in the news after a...

Yesterday’s Association of Chief Police Officers report into so-called “off-street' prostitution threw up a new – and already much-discussed – figure of 2,600 women and girls trafficked into forced prostitution in England and Wales...

If the Taliban were a product PR companies would be studying their tactics. Because they’ve certainly got massive “brand awareness”. Aside from al-Qaida (and maybe not even them), they’re surely the most talked about armed group in the...

As a wee young thing my mum used to send me to ballet lessons. A bittersweet pill I recall because while I disliked immensely ballet, I used to love the tap dance and jazz dance classes which followed. One of the reasons why I hated...

I’m in the unusual position of being sunburned in Scotland, after spending yesterday at the Comedians vs Critics football match at Edinburgh’s Meadowbank stadium. The final scoreline was 3-2 to the comedians and both teams played their...

We have all been waiting to hear when the elections in Burma happen, since we were told they would take place by the end of 2010. The ruling Generals, who make up the junta, have been getting their house in order, introducing new...

Over the years I’ve watched some very bad television. Haven’t we all? And it’s become a commonplace to denounce “reality TV” as the worst (“nothing very real about most of it”, say the critics) and well, some of this now-dominant TV...

I was delighted today, to see Steven Gerrard’s face emblazoned across the front page of the Guardian’s sports section , under the headline; “I’d boo as well”. I thought maybe it was some sort of pledge you just scribbled your name...

If you wanted to bring US justice into disrepute here’s an idea. Why not revisit the whole shabby business of “enemy combatants”? Go back to Guantánamo. Get the youngest inmate held there and put him on trial before a widely...

For several years any thought of Rwanda immediately invoked memories of the scenes of the brutal massacre of nearly 800,000 people in the space of 100 days. Cognisant of the imprint which the genocide has left on the country, Rwanda’s...

This Sunday, marks the anniversary of theinfamous 8/8/88 protests in Burma, wherein droves of people, many of themstudents, took to the streets of Rangoon to demand democracy. The peacefulprotests were brutally put down, by the ruling...

… Or so they say. I’m not too sure that Naomi Campbell – this morning at least – was thinking that as she stood to testify at Charles Taylor’s trial at The Hague about rough diamonds which the former Liberian President was alleged to...

One thing David Cameron and me have in common - probably the only thing - is that this week we’ve both been in Italy. OK, he’s been there to discuss the global economy, trade, and Afghanistan with Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi...

What do Saudia Arabia, Rwanda, Russia, Sri Lanka and, er, Guernsey have in common? Okay, I’ll tell you; all feature on a map in today’s Guardian of “UK PR firms’ current contracts with foreign governments”. The thrust of the...