The plight of the Uighurs – the much-persecuted, muslim ethnic majority in China’s distant north-western region of Xinjiang – was brought to the public’s attention this morning, and all for the wrong reasons. Getting reliable info from...

There was a fascinating footnote to last night's BBC4 programme, Man on the Moon , which told the story of the US space programme and the billions spent to put a man on the moon before the Soviets. On the eve of the Apollo 11 mission...

Criticise Gordon Brown and you get lost in the crush. Criticise Professor Alhaji Dr Yahya Jammeh, President of the Gambia, and you, your colleagues and your union leadership get charged with sedition and slung in jail. That's what's...

The question of how free people really are to express themselves and their sexual orientation in particular is a complex one. In the UK at least it seems like a very long time ago that it was actually against the law to be gay although...

In one of these strange bits of journalistic shorthand, the “Middle East” is often used as a way of referring to the Israel-Palestine situation. To me this has always seemed slightly bizarre. OK, I get the part-for-the-whole metonymy...