Новости за 21.07.2015

Towards the end of the 1960s jungle war Britain fought to protect Sarawak [in Borneo] against rebel incursions, I received orders to lead my commando unit over the border and take the fight to the insurgents, based on the other side of the Indonesian frontier. It was a controversial policy, but an effective one– the war ended not long afterwards.

When I first came across the phrase “forced marriage”, my instinctive response was that of most people: that it is an oxymoron. The whole point of marriage is that it is a consensual agreement, hopefully with a spot of romance thrown in and the approval of two families and their respective communities.

The fact that schools employ consultants to improve performance is a so-whatter (“The great school inspections farce”, 20 July). Many organisations employ consultants in order to maximise results. I have been in a school where we came out of special measures in four terms, and where consultants were used to undertake quality assurance audits, including lesson observations. Their expertise was crucial in raising standards.

There was a telling Tory-on-Tory spat over Syria this weekend. First David Cameron appeared on American television to promise more British support in the fight against Isis. He would, he told NBC viewers, “bring Parliament with him” to help destroy the caliphate in “both countries”. So far, Britain’s military intervention has been limited to Iraq, barring a few Tommy pilots riding along in Yankee airplanes – without parliamentary approval – over Syria. Plainly, the Prime Minister hopes to soon see the RAF flying in the open above Raqqa... Читать дальше...

There was a telling Tory-on-Tory spat over Syria this weekend. First David Cameron appeared on American television to promise more British support in the fight against Isis. He would, he told NBC viewers, “bring Parliament with him” to help destroy the caliphate in “both countries”. So far, Britain’s military intervention has been limited to Iraq, barring a few Tommy pilots riding along in Yankee airplanes – without parliamentary approval – over Syria. Plainly, the Prime Minister hopes to soon see the RAF flying in the open above Raqqa... Читать дальше...

Free up your listening experience from the hassle of wires

It was symbolic; but symbols matter. On Monday, a flag was raised outside a grand 100-year-old building in the Adams Morgan district in Washington. The Cuban Embassy, which had been shut for 54 years, formally reopened. The diplomatic grandees duly trooped in and out of the reception marking the occasion, and the Cuban community outside started to dance. They were still dancing far into the hot summer evening as the TV cameras wrapped-up their reports and the police in the white Fords of the US... Читать дальше...

It may be a natural reaction against the soul-crushing seriousness of the age, or nothing more than freakish good luck, but the Anglo-American world has never known a more golden era for the joke political candidate.

For a grand and stately art form, ballet can be very unpredictable. When I started writing The Ballet Lover's Companion, I knew that I'd have entries on the 19th and 20th-century classics, plus recent works establishing themselves on world stages. Then I found my history was expanding in both directions. I hadn't expected so many recent works to make the cut, or so many older works to leap back on stage after decades of neglect.

The way David Cameron tells it, this is the Battle of Syria. He’s going to “hammer” Isis, if he gets his way. Reminds you of Winston. Just imagine what our fighter boys were thinking when their 650 Spitfires and Hurricanes took on the Luftwaffe exactly 75 years ago: “Chocks away – and let’s give those Huns a full-spectrum response.”

There’s an entire Wikipedia page dedicated solely to 50 Cent’s feuds, many of them too boring for even the most committed rap fan to be interested in.  Mostly, there’s a lot of sparkly chain-stealing and bitchy name-calling before inevitably both sides sulk off to write a diss track about each other.

To mark the start of the silly season, this article is about sausages. The pork-based barbecue favourite, as one elegant variation might have it, is a pretty jolly food, isn’t it? That dog on Esther Rantzen’s That’s Life wouldn’t have been so funny if it had barked the word “bread” or “apples”.  And what other food would sound as good in a phrase like “silly sausage”?

The cuts include child tax credits and the household benefit cap

There are many age-old questions that have plagued humanity since the dawn of time; where did the universe come from? Is there really a god? What on earth is going on with Donald Trump’s hair?

The unfortunate truth about sexually transmitted infections (STIs) is that there are many people who may be unaware they have been infected. Without knowing you may be at risk, you could pass it on to future partners.

The six o’clock news led with the story that 35 of Jeremy Corbyn’s parliamentary colleagues had seen fit to put him on the ballot paper to be Labour’s new leader. Shortly after a family member rang me to ask: “Is he a serious candidate?”

In his speech on extremism yesterday, David Cameron challenged us to “confront a tragic truth - that there are people born and raised in this country who don’t really identify with Britain”. Well, at the risk of winding up in Belmarsh, I have a small confession to make. I’m one of them.

George Osborne called for progressives from all parties to support the £12bn cuts he wants to make to the welfare system yesterday. His call was answered last night when the Welfare Reform bill was passed by 308 votes to 124.

1. I know it’s how journalism works and everything, but the important question about last night’s vote on the welfare Bill is whether the changes are a good idea, not whether Labour is “in chaos”.

A WhatsApp message pinged on my mobile and the walls of my hotel room started closing in: "Don’t want to worry u but an Al Jazeera journo has just been arrested in Berlin at the request of the Egyptian government."

Mikheil Saakashvili – former President of Georgia and now Governor of the Ukrainian province of Odessa – has a warning for the West. He claims that if Vladimir Putin is not stopped in Ukraine he will “revisit” Georgia, where a nasty little war was fought in 2008, Azerbaijan, and, most alarmingly, the Baltic republics. According to Mr Saakashvili, Mr Putin will go after Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, all part of the USSR until 1991, if the Russians suspect Nato won’t put up a fight.

London, 5 August 2012, 9.45pm

As evidenced by the world premiere of his new percussion concerto, the septuagenarian maverick HK Gruber shows no signs of slowing down, or sobering up. His first percussion concerto had been, as he himself put it, ‘percussive noise-making in all its extrovert forms’; his new one, entitled Into the open…, is ‘a symphonic piece concentrating on percussion with distinct pitches’. And with Colin Currie as soloist, that was abundantly clear from the start.