One hundred years ago this autumn, Russia and Japan signed a peace treaty which brought 18 months of war to an end.
One of the poorest communities in Britain is one step closer to getting a super casino thanks to New Labour’s relaxation of the gambling laws.
A pipe bomb exploded at the home of a Catholic couple and their three year old boy in Ballymoney, County Antrim, last week. Steel fragments burst through the window destroying their living room.
Northern Ireland spends about £22 billion each year on its public services. It raises £14 billion in taxes, with another £8 billion coming from the British government. Under direct rule from Westminster, all of this money is allocated and spent from London.
"A new renaissance for Belfast," proclaim the banners surrounding an enormous £300 million building site in the city centre. It is one of numerous developments that form part of the "regeneration" of Northern Ireland.
The popular perception of the crusades is of wars fought by christian Europeans against Muslims who inhabited the holy land. But the Albigensian Crusade (1209-1229) was fought by Europeans against Europeans in the south of France. It was not about a "clash of civilisations" — rather it was a clash of feudal power, fought by nobles and the church.
January 1208Pope Innocent III declares a crusade against the Languedoc region of southern France, stronghold of the heretical Cathar christian sect.
The election in Germany has plunged the political establishment into crisis and has led to the biggest breakthrough of a radical left force since the Second World War. Gerhard Schröder’s SPD, similar to Britain’s New Labour, stood with a programme defending hated measures to attack the welfare state — Agenda 2010 and Hartz IV. The Tory CDU and its would-be coalition partners, the FDP, had programmes saying they would implement even harsher neo-liberal measures.
For the first time since the 1950s there is a nationwide political force to the left of the SPD.
‘The German elections give a big new impetus to the Party of the European Left. The Left Party successfully accomplished an unprecedented achievement in the history of post-war Germany — mass support given to a party which places itself to the left of the the continent’s biggest social democracy.
Trevor Phillips, chair of the Commission for Racial Equality, gave a widely reported speech on Thursday of last week in which he warned that Britain was "sleepwalking its way to segregation".
Last week the former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan and spokesman for the regime, was released from the US prison camp in Guantanamo Bay and sent home — a free man — at the request of Afghan president Hamid Karzai.
