January 5, 2019
Major Geoffrey Langlands arrived in India as part of the British effort to ensure its orderly partition in 1947. He never left.
His subsequent career as teacher followed the twists and turns of the new country of Pakistan where he was once kidnapped by militiamen and where he educated generations of political leaders, as well as taking tea with the country’s various military dictators.
December 29, 2018
Little Duda had a restless night. She is asleep now beneath a spotted blanket as her doting grandmother rummages in her handbag for a mobile phone. But rather than first words or first steps to show off to friends and relatives, Miriam Pereira uses the smartphone to record a different type of milestone, the sort she brings to show doctors and nurses. The screen reveals Duda in the grip of an epileptic fit. Her head rocks back. She shrieks as if in fear and her eyes roll upwards.
December 16, 2018
Joe Biden, Barack Obama’s vice-president, has emerged as an early frontrunner among Democrats vying for the 2020 presidential nomination with a dominant lead among voters in Iowa, who will be the first to state their preference next year.
A new CNN/Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll finds 32 per cent of likely caucusgoers saying they back Mr Biden as their first choice, ahead of 19 per cent for Bernie Sanders and 11 per cent for Beto O'Rourke, the telegenic campaigner who came close to an against-the-odds win in Texas last month.
December 13, 2018
SpaceCon one is the moment for last minute preparations.
Virgin Galactic’s technicians fuss over spaceship Unity inside her vast hangar, tightening insulating panels and topping up the tanks of compressed oxygen that will be used for in-flight navigation. She is already slung beneath White Knight, the four-engine aircraft that in the next few hours will carry her into the sky.
December 4, 2018
As so often with Elon Musk’s triumphs and tragedies, breakthroughs and lawsuits, the announcement came in an apparently off-hand tweet sent in a fit of frustration during the Los Angeles rush hour.
Within a few weeks, staff at SpaceX HQ in Los Angeles were ordered to move their vehicles from the car park. The digging began three hours later.
The world will get its first look at the results on December 10, when Mr Musk’s Boring Company unveils the first section of its two-mile test tunnel.
Read more here
December 1, 2018
After months of quiet, steady progress, Robert Mueller’s painstaking investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election is entering a new phase after publicly revealing it was closing in on its ultimate target. It came in a paragraph of legalese inside a nine-page court filing.
“Cohen discussed the status and progress of the Moscow Project with Individual 1 on more than the three occasions Cohen claimed to the Committee, and he briefed family members of Individual 1 within the Company about the project,” it reads.
With those lines in a plea deal with Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s long-time fixer and lawyer, Mr Mueller moves into uncharted territory. For “Individual 1” is the President of the United States, making him, his family and his business a major subject of interest in the criminal investigation.
November 30, 2018
It’s the bro-five. That moment when two like minded members of a brotherhood come together, outstretched hands colliding in a clasp somewhere between a high-five and a handshake.
If Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, had any nerves about how he would be received at the G20 summit – his first major trip since being implicated in the murder of a dissident journalist - then Vladimir Putin’s warm but calculating greeting would have put him at ease.
November 27, 2018
A dissident journalist is murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Such is the sophistication of the operation that his remains are yet to be found and a growing body of evidence points to the involvement of Mohammed Bin Salman, the Saudi Crown Prince
Then, after days of humming and hawing about who’s to blame, Donald Trump releases a statement putting himself four square behind the main suspect. In so doing he manages perhaps one of the clearest demonstrations yet of just how US foreign policy works while baiting his domestic opponents and throwing doubt on the work of his own intelligence agencies.
November 27, 2018
Demonstrators briefly occupied an Amazon Books store in New York on Monday amid growing fears that the online giant will force locals from their homes with an influx of highly skilled workers when the company opens its new headquarters.
It was one of two protests held on Cyber Monday to express anger at how billions of dollars in city money is being spent to attract a company owned by Jeff Bezos, named this year as the richest man on the planet.
November 27, 2018
This year’s White House Christmas decorations are nothing if not bold. Most striking are the 40 crimson trees lining the East Colonnade, all giving the effect of a spectacular and fiery - if unconventional - forest walk.
The colour pops again in thousands of baubles, cranberries and branches threaded through the display, all overseen by Melania Trump, the first lady. Not only does it evoke the magic and mystery prevalent in so much popular culture these days but it comes freighted with presidential meaning.
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