September 15, 2019
It is not an unusual sentiment in this blue-collar corner of Pennsylvania: “I voted Trump last time, and I’ll vote Trump next time because there’s a lot of loonies out there.”
What is unusual is that Gary Reese, 75, served as the Democratic mayor of Kingston, a town in Luzerne County at the heart of what used to be the state’s coal belt, in the 1990s. “The Democrats used to be about the working man,” he continued. “Now, they sound like communists.”
August 1, 2019
Nigel Farage is three large gin and tonics in, and there is as yet no sign that dinner is imminent. And he has just announced that he has a midnight hit on Fox News.
“It makes no difference. I have the five-pint rule,” he says, glass in hand. “Up to five for live telly.”
Then he explodes into the sort of throaty guffaws that mark out a man who expects a decent bottle of claret with dinner, and a cigarette on the sidewalk between courses.
July 11, 2019
The question comes toward the end of the Boris show. The man who will be the next prime minister of the United Kingdom has mussed his golden hair, insulted a Scottish fondness for deep-fried chocolate bars, and deployed trademark wit in describing the importance of tackling crime as “basic hygiene for Conservatives.”
It is his last chance to persuade members of the Conservative Party to back him as leader before voting starts the next day. And the audience in Perth, Scotland, is loving every moment.
Then, after 41 minutes, a tall woman in a black dress makes her way to the microphone.
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.
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