Sunday 12 April 2026 The outbreak of the 2026 Iran war produced a series of geopolitical consequences far beyond the Middle East. Airspace closures, missile strikes and widespread disruption to commercial aviation stranded thousands of foreign travellers across the Gulf and neighbouring regions. Governments worldwide scrambled to organise emergency repatriations for their citizens. In the midst of this turmoil an unusual episode unfolded involving China and Taiwan, in which B

Sunday 12 April 2026 In times of war the survival of a nation depends not only upon the endurance of her soldiers or the resilience of her infrastructure, but also upon the preservation of her cultural memory. In Ukraine, where the violence of invasion has sought to erase both sovereignty and identity, folk traditions have re-emerged as instruments of resistance as potent as any weapon deployed upon the battlefield. Songs once sung in village gatherings, seasonal rituals or f

Sunday 12 April 2026 Palantir is not, in the ordinary sense, a “human resources application”. It is a way of building human resources applications from the data an institution already holds—data that is typically scattered across payroll, rostering, sickness records, training logs, vetting files, professional standards casework and countless spreadsheets. Palantir’s promise is that, once those fragments are pulled into a single governed data environment, managers can see patt

Sunday 12 April 2026 The coarsening of public speech is rarely announced as a revolution. It arrives instead as a drift — a gradual loosening of standards, a subtle recalibration of what is considered acceptable, and then, before one quite notices, a transformation of the atmosphere itself. What was once unsayable becomes commonplace; what was once shocking becomes merely emphatic; and what was once regarded as vulgar becomes the language of politics, entertainment and even o

Saturday 11 April 2026 The announcement of a ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia over the period of Orthodox Easter carries with it a symbolism that is at once ancient and profoundly contemporary. Easter in the Orthodox tradition marks resurrection, renewal and the possibility of redemption after suffering. It is therefore difficult to resist the hope that even a brief silencing of the guns might herald something more enduring. Yet as with so much in this war, symbolism must