BBC As African leaders gather in Beijing this week for the triennial China-Africa summit, Chinese President Xi Jinping may have one thing under his belt to boast about – satellite TV. Almost nine years ago, President Xi promised the heads of state attending the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in Johannesburg that China would provide … Read more
From Scandi-style speakeasies to decadent dive bars, the UK’s bar scene is currently enjoying a renaissance. “The UK is always ahead when it comes to pushing the bar scene forward,” says Adam Taylor, who leads the team at Project Halcyon Distillery in Manchester, a subterranean, hard-to-find bolthole that has the feel of an illicit warehouse … Read more
RIO DE JANEIRO: A Brazilian Supreme Court panel on Monday unanimously upheld the decision of one of its justices to block billionaire Elon Musk’s social media platform X nationwide, according to the court’s website. The broader support among justices undermines the effort by Musk and his supporters to cast Justice Alexandre de Moraes as an … Read more
To those in the know, the British cocktail scene is growing up. Just like a child moving into adulthood, it’s evolving from the overly sweet, simple cocktails of the early 2000s into an older, wiser drinks scene with a tinge of bitterness. Negronis are in vogue and drink aficionados have trained their taste buds to … Read more
What word conjures up Italian summer evenings better than aperitivo? What started as a pre-dinner drink to “open the appetite” (aprire in Italian means “to open”) has become one of the most important social rituals in Italy. From about 7pm to 9pm, as offices begin to empty, Italian bars fill up with people still in … Read more
A shot of Fernet-Branca is the bartender’s handshake, or so I was told when I was given my first taste of the intensely aromatic Italian amaro at the Griffin in Shoreditch, east London. But maybe it should be called the chef’s handshake too, given its cult status in the foodie world. This pub, so often … Read more
Paris: Inspired by the country’s armed forces and cricket star Virat Kohli, a determined Kumar Nitesh sparkled with a gold medal on debut before javelin throw champion Sumit Antil joined India’s para-badminton players in ensuring that the nation celebrated its best day at the ongoing Paralympic Games.Thanks to their heroics, India remained on course for … Read more
Caroline Gratrix Primary school head teacher Ruth Perry took her own life after an Ofsted inspection which downgraded her school Ofsted’s response to a head teacher’s suicide following a school inspection was “defensive and complacent”, a major review has found. Dame Christine Gilbert’s independent review was commissioned after an inquest last year concluded that a … Read more
One day in 2017 I had a realisation that seems obvious now but had the power to shock back then: almost everything I did was being mediated by computer code. And as the trickle of code into my world became a flood, that world seemed to be getting not better but worse in approximate proportion. … Read more
BBC It has been a recurrent theme of this US presidential campaign – has the US economy performed better under Joe Biden or Donald Trump? “By many indicators our economy is the strongest in the world,” Democratic Vice-President Kamala Harris has claimed. Trump, the Republican nominee and former president, says he created the “greatest economy … Read more