Jerusalem: A campaign to inoculate children in Gaza against polio and prevent the spread of the virus began on Saturday, the Health Ministry said, as Palestinians in the Hamas-governed enclave and in the occupied West Bank reeled from Israel’s military offensives. A small number of children in Gaza began receiving doses a day before the … Read more
Anthony Albanese had just finished briefing Pacific island leaders on Australia’s bid to host a UN climate summit when one of his counterparts made a pointed intervention. The president of the Marshall Islands, Hilda Heine, began her speech diplomatically, saying she was “grateful” for the update and hoped the initiative was a “true” partnership with … Read more
Peter Doig became the most expensive living painter in Europe in 2007, when White Canoe, his atmospheric painting of a a moonlit lagoon, sold for £5.7m. The Scot then saw his auction record broken in 2017 and in 2021 respectively, when Rosedale, his depiction of a house in a snow storm, and Swamped, another enigmatic … Read more
During the general election, I made a promise to the British people: to restore economic stability. I did so because I saw the damage taking risks with the public finances can cause. Liz Truss’s mini-budget, less than two years ago, crashed markets and caused interest rates to soar. Stability is the essential ingredient to a … Read more
To have one key player in the final year of his contract is happenstance. To have two key players in the final year of their contracts is coincidence. To have three key players in the final year of their contracts begins to look a little like carelessness. The contracts of Virgil van Dijk, Mohamed Salah … Read more
I was watching the news on TV one evening when friends, a couple from Kochi, dropped in. “We’re on our way to the Mookambika temple at Kollur,” explained the husband, Balakrishnan, aka Bala. “We got stuck in traffic and we’re not going to make it before the temple closes tonight, so we thought we’d see … Read more
Reuters Abdul Rahman Abu Al-Jidyan was the first person to contract polio in Gaza in 25 years UN agencies and local health officials in the Gaza Strip are launching an ambitious campaign to vaccinate 640,000 children against polio. The rollout relies on a series of localised pauses in fighting between Israeli forces and Hamas fighters, … Read more
I am tired, very tired of our political discourse: the same coarseness, the unabating acrimony, the repetitive issues, the predictable responses, the unchanging allegations, the unceasing cacophony, the monotonous analysis, the absence of morality, the demise of values, the transparent hypocrisy, and the tediousness of non-stop “breaking news”. So, this column takes a break from … Read more
The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, is under fresh pressure this weekend over controversial plans to limit winter fuel allowance to the poorest pensioners, amid claims that it will cause “severe hardship” to millions of elderly people. The Observer has learned that the country’s leading charity for older people, Age UK, has written to Reeves with a … Read more
When former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir Ghulam Nabi Azad walked out of the Congress in a huff and floated his own party, the Democratic Progressive Azad Party, it was an open secret that he had the blessings of the Bharatiya Janata Party which hoped that his seniority, experience and political standing would help … Read more